Hi All,
I recently attended a frame building workshop with Tim Sanner in Palo Alto CA. Overall had a GREAT time, learned a lot, and built a nice bike!
Here are some shots of the process and finished product:
The Jig we used:

DSC_8042 by neil.sasaki, on Flickr
Parts:

DSC_8043 by neil.sasaki, on Flickr
Jigged Up:

DSC_8087 by neil.sasaki, on Flickr
Brazing:

DSC_8120 by neil.sasaki, on Flickr
Ready for powdercoat:

DSC_8155 by neil.sasaki, on Flickr
Built up:

DSC_9495 by neil.sasaki, on Flickr

DSC_9517 by neil.sasaki, on Flickr

DSC_9527 by neil.sasaki, on Flickr

More shots here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/neilsas...7633202933638/

Let me know what you think!

I think its a great looking frame/bike. Nice pics on your flicker too. Whats the geometry and type of lugs/crown/bb/drops?

Brian

Thanks for the compliments- the lugs are all Long Shen with true temper tubes. The geometry is standard road with a 56cm seat tube and a 56cm tt; I'm not sure the exact angles as Tim set that up for us.

Nice! I like the key head badge!

Neil; Awesome build. Much appreciate the start to finish photos. Are you planning a tandem next?

On the side; Noted that your torching access around the seat lug seems a bit constrainted by the JIG in use. Suggest it might be a good process add to leave the seat tube a few inches longer, moving the JIG bracket further up and out of the way and thus ease the torch. I tend to just leave it full length...others just leave it an inch above the top of the lug. I find the extra bit of seattube as a nice place to slide the brass down into the lug. FWIW!

/K

Thanks for the feedback- the Jig I used belonged to the guy I took the workshop from, but good advice for future projects.

Next bike is probably going to be a city bike; a grocery getter type bike with custom racks & possibly a basket.

Thanks!

Hey, that looks familiar! It turned out great Neil! This is Chris from Tim's class.

I'm still doing some finish work on mine. Need to fill a couple of spots that got missed in the rush of the final day. Should get the tanks filled this week and then back at it.

Ksisler, we only tacked in the jig and used bike stands for everything else. The lugs we used wouldn't allow use to leave the tube at full length. There was a shoulder inside the lug that stopped the tube.

How does the shoulder on the st work with seatpost installation, is the id of the seat tube flush with the interior edge of the shoulder?

thanks, Brian

Maybe shoulder isn't the correct term. There is a ridge on the inside of the lug for the tube to butt up against.

This is a seat lug like the one Cynikal is describing. The ridge is 0.8mm thick on this one, and the seat tube butts up against it.



Here is the view from the top of the lug with a tube inserted and butted against the ridge.

That's a beauty. Good job.

Yup. that's it. Clearly a picture is worth a 1000 poorly chosen words.

File it out. Problem solved. I hate those shoulder thingys.

Every beginner should file the shoulder out of seat lugs so the seat tube can extend above the lug. There shouldn't be an exception to this. The reason it is important to extend the tube is allow any extra silver to be flowed out to somewhere it can later be cut off. This allows one to get super crisp shorelines so there will be no silver peeking out beyond the lug that needs to try and be removed later. No starting builder has the skill to get exactly the right amount in without it being too little or too much. What they can do is learn how to make sure silver is everywhere between the lug and tube and then flow the extra (including what is on the shorelines) to where it doesn't matter. For this same reason some extra head tube should extend above the top tube lug and below the down tube lug. This extra tubing can also come in handy when checking frame alignment on a flat table. And if for some reason a person screws up and they need to touch up the lug again with a torch – which shouldn't be necessary with sufficient training – this extra extended tubing makes rebrazing easier.

These lugs with shoulders were originally designed to cut down on costs when making production frames. They aren't friendly to custom builders.

It's the nuggets like this that really make this forum great. Thanks Doug.

Congratulations on the first frame, hope to do one myself in about two years.

Wow. Amazing work. Looks better raw IMO. The paint really kills the details and lug work.

Congrats,that is a beautiful piece.

I just today started looking into this sub forum. All I can say is..... WOW! There are some talented people here.

Your bike looks fantastic!

Thanks for all of the encouragement! I plan on getting all the stuff to make more frames in the future.

Nice bike!
I really like how looks an old school style frame with brand new components.
Good Job

Cynikal; Apologies for being off-line for a while. I would like to add my +10's for all those that replied to "get rid of that interior sleeve" on those seat lug. Yep, they save a few dollars for the volume factories but don't contribute to other builder's success as far as I can discern (others may have better insight). As I tend to mostly using brass rather than silver, when I have had to use those type of lugs (such as a xlarge frame that required me to leverage that extra few cm's of ST length), I just turned the frame upside down and ran the brass in from the bottom to get an adequate fill. With that, the work needed to ream out of the seat tube is greater that for a regular lug, but tolerable.

Re my original post regarding more cramped jig space for the tubes. I have always left the seat tube full length, valuing the extra tube as a way to gain more accuracy during the build and when checking the frame for alignment afterward. Also tend to longer head tube stock for the same reason. As I most often build on a flat table, the extra tube lengths at those two locations give me spots further away to put my v-blocks (spacer for the tubes away from the table top) and thus providing better alignment.

/K

Good points. If I use this lug set again I'll remove that section.