This thread has moved in some new and interesting directions.

I have pretty limited brazing experience. It is limited to doing some simple repairs, ie replacing dropouts, in the back of one of the bike shops where I used to work. One of the other mechanics there who was also a framebuilder taught me. What I remember from this is that most failures from brazing are likely to be the result of insufficient cleaning, not enough flux, etc. The actual brass is pretty strong, especially with a good fillet. I'd be interested to see what fails first in some destructive testing too. As I already pointed out, I think part of the reason I never ran across a broken eyelet in the old days is that the racks would break before the eyelet. Perhaps the answer to this question then is, yes, brazed on eyelets are fine, just be sure and use a Pletscher rack with them. Also, probably most people that toured used bikes with forged on eyelets for the rack, and knew which eyelet to use.

I also remember my Blackburn rack as being pretty tough. Hard to imagine breaking it. I wonder if the original flavor Blackburns were heat treated? Mine was the old original style non-adjustable type. It would have been very easy to bring the cost down by not heat treating at some point. None would have been the wise, and production cost would go way down, but the racks would be ~ half as strong.

For sure. In fact I wanted to get up to the PNW this summer to visit some old friends, but given the situation, it's going to have to wait till next year. Also, As I Recall more Correctly, I think I added about a day per decade to that tour, much like how fast I was BITD , but it was still around 3 weeks. We burned up a couple bottles of fuel.