Not entirely true. Columbia brazed frames without using a fillet or lugs for decades. But, they use an internal sleeve insert at the joints - so kind of like an internal lug. This was actually the way to build a bike up until external lugs became popular in the 1920s. External lugs caught on because they look pretty - Gormully & Jeffries pioneered external lugs and their copywriting of the time advised that external lugs made it easier for a buyer to examine the brazing of a frame (it does).

I personally like the super clean joins on the Columbia frames, even if there is a lot of excess brazing material left over on the inside of the frame...

Murray also brazed their frames, but they didn't sleeve all joints, only some such as the joints at the bottom bracket were sleeved. However for both companies, the tubes actually have to pass into eachother at the joints, unlike the butt welded frames from Huffy where the join is sometimes soley made to the exterior surface of the tubes.

Just so you know:

This is what an internally sleeved, brazed Columbia frame joint looks like. So sharp you could cut your hair on it.

It's a moot point though, since I'll admit a ten speed Columbia is nearly as heavy as a Schwinn Varsity (about nine hundred and twenty five thousand tons) so not what you should be looking for.



Reread the original post. Then come up with any logical reason a steel framed bike would fail to provide what he wants.