Brazing day. Eighty-eight left.
Posted by: Michael Slater in Le Chacal, tags: framebuilding
Freshly-brazed triangle
Today I brazed the front triangle of Ryan’s Mini-Velo. Unlike Le Chacal, where I brazed and mitered piece by piece, on this one, I mitered and fit the whole frame and then brazed at one go.
“At one go” is an optimistic way to describe it. It took the better part of the day. I varied my technique a bit — I ‘tinned’ the joints first and then added the fillets.
Sulaiman convinced me to make my fillets thicker after I first brazed the frame. That added some time to the process, but it was good practice. I learned some tricks to build much nicer fillet mounds. Fluxing the rod itself enables me to feed it much more smoothly into the fillet mound. And I also can identify the correct color of red that indicates a fillet at the right temperature for building.
I wrapped the joints in wet rags overnight so I can remove the flux tomorrow and then measure the alignment. I am hoping for the a nice, straight frame. I added to the fillets after taking it off the jig — hope that didn’t warp things.
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