Originally Posted by
KrisPistofferson
Speaking as someone who has TIG-welded aluminum and steel and brazed steel, I would say it's a negligible difference in how skilled a welder needs to be if he's specializing in doing just that one thing day after day. As far as which one is stronger, I have no opinion on, but lugs are a good bit more aesthetically pleasing, and I've never really heard anyone **** a brick over the beauty of a TIG weld.
TIG welding Ti, on the other hand, takes some mad skillz, there are a lot of factors to take into account, like stainless steel, with it's weird heat displacement, only worse.
Not that TIG is all that hard, but the learning curve is much slower than brazing where you simply heat it up and shove in some flux core braze. Also, if you weld joints you must make the ends of the tubes meet nicely. To lug them you just have to hide the end of the tube in the lug somewhere. I'm not saying one is better than the other, but lugs are to a certain extent a way of the past for steel bicycles.