Making a Waterford replacement fork
 

I don’t usually take on general building and painting work. I’ve got enough going on. However. one of my old customers from the 70’s crashed his Waterford with fancy stainless joints and needed a replacement. I knew there aren't many that can do this kind of work so I took it on with the understanding other work comes 1st.

Stainless is hard to braze and even the pros at Waterford didn’t get this one right. When he ran into the back of the garbage truck, the inside fork tang gave way because the silver didn’t take hold there. My replacement would include the fancy embellishments on the side but I would use a regular steel fork crown.


https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...dd0e395c7.jpeg

To begin with I had to discover the original dimensions. The rake was lost since the blades had been bent way back. I could place the Waterford frame in my design fixture and rediscover its geometry. It had a 72º head angle so it appeared the rake was 50mm. I could get the fork length off the old fork.

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This isn't the Waterford but it illustrates how I discover a frame's geometry. This is my Masi I got in 1972 and I wanted decider its geo.

To recreate the Hetchins style of outside tang I first did a rubbing. Then I traced the tubing so it was more defined. I then increased it size on my copier to 200%, Then using velum paper, I refined the tracing by hand. I sent these drawings with dimensions to the laser cutting company that makes my fixtures in Ukraine. A couple of weeks later I got back a plate with the design laser cut out of stainless.
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This shows the progression from tracing to adjustment to enlargement to more adjustments

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at the laser cutting company took my drawings and dimensions and turned them into a CAD drawing


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the design cut out of stainless

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the design punched out of the plate.


To be continued:

Very interesting to see the process.

I am a rather sloppy person and I stand in awe of the precision that you (and so many others) show when crafting a bike.

Will you chrome it and then paint the legs or paint the whole fork?

I'll be a bit vulnerable here. I hope you school me (as the young folk might say):

I don't disagree with avoiding stainless but I will be a bit more charitable for our guys in Waterford. My pragmatic and analytical side says - in this case, the strength of the joining seems well matched to the material properties as they both failed under the same stressor. So, is stainless really the problem? I know you're not saying stainless is bad but from a philosophical standpoint, this seems like an ideal failure where the joint failed with the parent material. Obviously, making a lighter crown of steel (better adhesion) and having this equal failure would be better (i.e. lighter) but for what it is, this doesn't seem like worst case scenario.

I don't know if there is a question buried in there and obviously, I'm assuming the separation of the lug from the leg didn't cause the leg deformation etc etc etc.

Thank you sincerely for sharing here.

The brazing should never be the point of failure. Peeling back like that is pretty rare it's so bad. There are a couple of reasons why that might happen. Cleanliness or overheat. I was a little shocked when I saw the pictures of the waterford workshop when they had their auction. So cleanliness isn't out of the question.

Hard to tell from here, but it looks like they just flowed silver around the outside of that tang. I have a theory about how that happened. The first time I brazed some stainless dropout axle reinforcements, I overheated it and the silver wouldn't flow at all. That was a mess to clean up. Of course, it was immediately obvious to me that I only had silver around the outside. I feel like the waterford worker should have known that was happening. I have done a lot of stainless since then, but only one stainless fork crown. It was a non-event. It is really easy to overheat stainless, it takes about the same amount of heat to get up to temp as regular steel, but at the end it goes from not hot enough to overheated really quickly.

The point of sharing the brazing issue is that it is a good illustration of the difficulties of brazing stainless. Unless someone is a very good brazier they should avoid avoid using stainless lugs or fork crowns. They have a narrower temperature window that if exceeded, will tarnish the surface and prevent attachment. Furthermore stainless doesn't transfer heat as well so it is necessary to have a better flame pattern to bring the area up to temperature at the same time. Stainless has to be a bit hotter to accept silver while at the same time can't be overheated. What I am guessing happened on the Waterford fork is that the builder did not insure that the tangs were solidly touching the blades. If there is a slight separation, the tangs will almost instantly get too hot and corrode the surface and one has to start over. Of course in this case the tangs are just decorative so they fact they broke free wasn't a structural issue.

My approach to finishing this fork is to paint the fork crown and just polish the stainless embellishments on the side. I'm not properly set up to polish the fork crown and the customer would like his replacement fork before this decade is over.

My travel bike has stainless lugs and stainless fork crown. It has been 5 years since I made it and I still haven't polished anything. I spent a lot of time at work polishing fatigue specimens, so it shouldn't seem so daunting.

I would also like to note that was broken for quite some time. Owner needs to clean his bike more often. Do as I say, not as I do.

I agree with this and looking more closely at the picture (my eyes are really betraying me!), it's clear there wasn't penetration on the points. by the rust, it seems it had been that way for a while.

I’ll skip to chapter 3 brazing the fork blades to the fork crown and later come back to brazing the dropouts to the blades. None of this information will be of much use to experienced builders but might help those with less. When I was learning to build frames in England, we brazed the crown first before brazing the dropouts. This allowed us to modify the length more easily to center the wheel. We didn’t have at Ellis Briggs a fancy fork fixture so that dictated doing the DOs last.

The oval shape of a fork blade frequently does not play nice with the oval shape of crown’s sockets. This probably involves some blacksmithing of the blades to make them fit properly. Most likely by squeezing them in a vise. Care has to be taken to ensure that the socket is touching the walls of the blades - especially on longer tangs. Otherwise it is easy to overheat the extensions and as a result corrode its surface before the silver melts. The other reason for making a tight fit is to help with getting clean shorelines. Any gap creates an area where silver can bulge out and is unsightly and reveals less skill. What I do during fit up is to use a punch to tighten the edges to the blades. The advantage of using a punch is that a blow can be precisely placed. Hitting it directly with a hammer is usually not an approved practice. Sometimes this involves just bending the edge of the socket walls in with the blows on the punch.

IMHO that's a superior way to make forks even if you do have a fancy fixture.

At Davidson we almost always brazed blades and steerer to crown in one heating, with the blades straight. Then raking, then cut to length, then brazing the dropouts. We made a couple thousand that way, always came out straight.

Do you still do it that way?

I need to figure out how to proof my fancy fork fixture, I swear it has some problems left over from when I knocked it off my alignment table. Oops. That table is cursed, I also knocked my TS2.2 off of it. Of course, there was no hope that was ever straight.

When I brazed the blades to the crown, I used Gasflux Type G. As discussed in an earlier thread, type G is a great flux because it has a higher active range and in my opinion may clean better than type U. Those with less experience should place flux further up the blades to act as a reservoir if their brazing length of time exceeds their flux. Applying Gasflux flux is something most of my students don’t do well until instructed. The goal is to leave a modestly thick even layer. What tends to happen is that when they brush flux on, they are tending to wipe it off at the same time leaving too thin of a layer. Instead of brushing it on, it needs to be rolled on (if using a flux brush) leaving a glob that can be distributed more smoothly over the area.

It is also a bit of an art form or game to dry the flux with your flame before it runs onto the floor as you begin brazing. Unless you take a thoughtful approach, it all tends to run away as soon as your flame touches it. To keep as much flux as possible on the joint, keep the flame close to the work, start low and work up, point the flame up so its gas pressure tends to counter the run aways and move somewhat slowly. I go after the flux runners with my flame. Cycle Design flux was completely different but there is no need now to explain how to evaporate the water.

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...70b05cc7f.jpeg
fluxed and ready for brazing

No, not since '94. After Big D, I worked two other places, that had their own way of making forks and I didn't try to ram anything down their throat.

Now as a hobbyist I would probably do it the old way of raking one blade at a time, adding the dropout, cutting the length, and only then brazing the crown. One reason is I'm not in a hurry (the D way is faster), but also I don't have a raker that does both blades at once. Or actually I do have one* (Marchetti or Bike Machinery or similar, no brand marking on it). But it's not useful to me, for the next few forks I want to make anyway, it makes a large-radius curve with limited total offset, so I can't make "low trail" forks. I don't need any more short-rake racing bike forks.

* personal to Andrew S., did I buy that from you? I got it used from someone. No regrets, it's a cool thing to own. If it was from you, do you remember the brand?

To fully follow the D. way, you also need a way to cut the blades to precisely the same length after brazing and raking, indexing off the brake hole. I made two at D., one to cut them square for plug-type, and one to slot them for trad drops.

Trad forged drops have that rounded shoulder though, not repeatable, so I also made another arbor for lathe-turning a nice sharp repeatable shoulder to mate with the bottom of the slot. I might make myself one; it's not needed for the "normal" fork making method where you cut the blades to length after the drop is brazed in, but I just like things that fit that nice. The lathe turning step takes like 10 seconds, so if you have the arbor then why not?

I recently did a couple traditional road forks. Finished them, made sure the wheel centered and they were straight. Right out of the fixture, they were spot on. Just before I sent them out for paint, I thought I'd check the rake. Oops... Rake was supposed to be 45 and they ended up 41. During my shop remodel/upgrades, my fixture apparently got bumped and the steerer tube seat wasn't sitting flat. URGH.... At that point it was urgent so I had to order new crowns and remake them over the weekend!

I have all kinds of brazing torches and tips so my framebuilding class students can try out various ones to see what they like best. When I brazed the blades to the crown, I used my Uniweld 71 torch handle that had a Victor UN-J mixer elbow. It is the biggest and lightest airline torch handle I have. The challenge of brazing a box crown is getting silver penetration on the inside socket walls. That area is not reachable with a flame. For this reason, it is better for those with less skill to use a full slopping crown because the inside socket walls are accessible. What is necessary with a box crown is to apply soaking heat from a distance with a bigger flame. In this case I chose a G-tec #1 tip. This is a multi-port tip that provides a longer sharp center flame. It is similar to a rosebud except the center flame. I lit a G-tec #0 but it was too much like a rosebud with the center flame being barely longer than the side flames. I use the sharp center flame to clean the shorelines after the silver has been applied. That skill is one of the hardest for my students to learn and in fact some of them never do.

After the crown to blades braze was finished and cooled, I switched to a Victor TEN-2 tip to braze on the decorations. First I had to file off the outside tip of the crown so its width matched the stem width of the fancy bit. I used 50N silver for this braze because it works better with stainless. I ordered the decoration with a 2mm thickness so it is easier to braze and not that hard to file down to the thickness of the crown socket. Exceptional care had to be used to add just the right amount of silver because there is no place to take it if I added too much.


https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...83b8da1f7.jpeg
After brazing on the appliqué, I filed it to the same thickness as the crown. Later I will start the process of polishing it to a bright finish.

I was curious about the appearance of the kerf on the laser-cut fleur de lis but it seems like it went away in filing the bevel. I suppose it was only on the upper surface and the cut on the bottom side of the plate was pretty small

My summer schedule finally allowed me to finish the fork. I wanted to get advice from my collogues on how to buff the decoration. Fortunately in my painting supplies were many grits of sandpaper. I started with 80 grit emery and went to 180 and then to 240 emery (because that is what I had in stock). Then I cut sandpaper strips 1" wide and went 400, 500, 600, 800. 1000, 1500. 2000 and finally 2500 grit. By the time I got to 2500, the decoration was pretty shinny and mostly matched to decorations on the frame that had been dulled a bit from use.

I started polishing after the sandpaper with a 4" buffing wheel on my Foredom rotary tool. This didn't work well because because there were too many edges on the small decoration. Using the small felt wheels that come with my Dremel worked great and brought it up to a nice shine. I then masked it with masking tape and I cut to the edges with an Exacto knife.

Painting the fork to match the original frame was a challange. I was told Waterford originally used PPG paint on their frame and I don't use PPG products. I discovered a new to me auto paint supply store semi-near me that specializes in PPG products that matched the color using the old fork as an example. Crossing over different paint brands may create issues. I painted the fork with House of Kolor red primer. Their red primer is not all that different from the PPG final red. I like to do this because if there is a chip, it isn't so obvious. I used the PPG red as a base coat mixed with H of K reducer without any activator. On top of that i put a couple of protective H of K clears. These clears got sanded down for final coating of H of K clears. I use different types of H of K clears for the protective and final coats.

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...331244d43.jpeg
My progressively finer grits of sandpaper I used on the fork decoration

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...1a264401f.jpeg
After sanding with 2500 grit but before a final polish with my Dremel tool

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After masking with masking tape

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The finished product

Gotta say you have improved on the aesthetics of the original fork. I have never seen just the embellishment being "chromed", in this case SS, and the rest of the crown painted. I like it better than the whole crown being chromed.
Thanks for detailing the process. Good info there.

"--- different types of HoK clears..."

only the pros can gamble like that with confidence