It's really knowing when the frame's too far gone. I've replaced a steerer on a fork, dropouts on forks, but show me a crack up in the crown, fuggetaboutit. A crack in a rear dropout, one can replace it, but that's a lotta work. You can replace tubes, even, if you really want to. Go to Peter Weigle's site and you can find an instance where he replaced an entire chain stay. That's a master at work, but that frame was special to the customer and had an accident where the stay was really whacked.

I'm like the kid that has a dog follow him home. It's hard for me to say no to saving a frame if I can. It's really amazing how much abuse a steel frame can take and still be brought back into alignment. When I was much younger, all the racers rode on steel, because that's what we had. You crashed, bent the frame, and it as the only bike you had, you brought it in and had it straightened, and raced it the next weekend. Nowadays everything's seen as disposable.