So, a young university student contacted me a couple of days ago, saying that he had a cracked right rear dropout. When he brought it over, I saw that the dropout had cracked due to a broken solid axle (surprise surprise). While I’ve replaced dozens and dozens of dropouts over the decades (a pretty routine repair for a framebuilder) in this case, with a flat plate dropout,
i decided to braze on a splint instead.




so I traced the outline of the dropout and cut out its shape from some 2mm steel plate:





and brass-brazed it into place place:






After some clean-up, and pulling the right side over a couple millimeters to keep the wheel centered, and aligning the dropouts, I sprayed some rattlecan primer on the bare metal.






So, probably a bit more work than replacing the dropout, and probably spending more time than the bike was worth, it’s nice to see an old classic back on the road, likely good for another forty or fifty years. Great to see the young ‘uns enjoying a simple old school steel bike.