I'm thinking about replacing the entire steerer on a fork I made in about '88 for myself. I would like a longer steerer to get the bars up higher (also extending the head tube in the process), because I was a racer with a very aero position back then and now I'm fat and inflexible. The reason for not splicing: I used an unbutted steerer. It is Excell, a "super steel" almost twice as strong as 531 (~200 ksi IIRC), so maybe it's strong enough as-is, but another thing that's changed about me is I'm much less willing to fall on my face these days... And being fat, it's stupid to be a weight-weenie anywhere on the bike, much less on a steerer. Just thinking about it breaking takes all the fun out of high-speed downhilling.

I won't melt the steerer out though, because of the damage that does to the crown and maybe even the blades, which are silver-brazed to the crown (steerer is brass-brazed — contrary to my usual approach of brazing the whole crown in one heat cycle). I lightened the crown, after it was brazed to the steerer, using the steerer to hold it in the lathe and mill. I'm still confident the crown is strong enough, but maybe not with so much strength to spare that I can cook the hell out of it. And melting the brass while not melting the nearby silver is too risky.

So if I do this, I will bore the old steerer out, cold. This will require making a fixture to go on the lathe. Similar to a fork-brazing jig, only it won't hold the steerer (obviously), it will hold only the dropouts and the crown. I will dial it in until the steerer is exactly on the centerline of the lathe spindle, and use a boring head to precisely make the hole fit the new steerer, with silver-brazing clearance.

I wouldn't normally make such a fixture for a single use, but once made, it would allow me to do this repair on other forks easily in the future. Making the jig will take me maybe 2-3 hours, and since it's hobby time for me, it doesn't have to make sense dollar-wise. My fixture will be ugly, probably made of scrap metal, but rigid and with the ability to be indicated-in precisely on the lathe.

If anyone has a fork they want me to do this on, don't hold your breath! I have "been thinking about doing this" for at least 10 years, probably 20. There are lots of other projects in the queue before it, and those aren't happening very fast either.

Just throwing this out there in case anyone has any comments or suggestions... or has that exact fixture they could lend me!