Friday, May 30, 2014

 Lots going on on Robins rain speeder.  Here, finishing up all the lug carving.
 Vent holes have been drilled.
 I removed 4 mm off of the new Paragon stainless water bottle bosses.  I don't care for blind holes and the bosses are a handy spot for shooting in an occasional shot of frame saver.

 And they are silver brazed in.
 Fitting up the stainless Di2 wire port reinforcements.
Done!
The front triangle is fixtured and ready for brazing.

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

 The shift cable stops have been removed and the lug profile has been reshaped to match the HT/TT lug.
Starting to mock up the front triangle.

Saturday, May 24, 2014

 The seat post and bb shell have been joined
 And after the flux soak
 A random shot of the dropout join after finishing.
 Draw filing the stainless dropout face prior to polishing.
The stainless piece to protect the chain stay paint from chipping by the rotor.

Thursday, May 22, 2014

 The dropout faces are on, along with stainless faces for the brake mount.  I can't deal with chipped or compressed paint.
While I was at it, I brazed on the wire port for the rear derailleur.
 I roughed in the scallops and will finish them when all the brazing is complete.
Let's silver braze on some stainless steel dropout faces.

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Today, I marked all the butts and transitions and identified the bow of each tube.
 I also slotted the ends of the chainstays to accept the dropouts after I bent the tabs 7 degrees.
Almost, finish the fitting tomorrow and braze Thursday morning.

Monday, May 19, 2014

Back from the ATOC and ready to get serious on Robins frame.  Here, you can see that I removed that little bridge between the chain stay lug ports.  I also reshaped the rear seat tube point to match the front and carved out a little window.
I also reshaped the outer points on the chain stay ports for aesthetic purposes.  
These bottom bracket shells don't have the down tube ports machined to the bottom, leaving a ledge.  I like the down tube to extend fully to the bottom of the shell, so I removed the ledge.  This shell started out at 180 gms. and is now down to 155 gms.  After the down tube point is reshaped and a larger window cut, over an ounce will have been removed.

Monday, May 5, 2014

As you can almost see, the seat tube/down tube angle of the bottom bracket shell is  60' and Robins frame needs  55.6'.
 So, I have some pieces of water pipe sleeved with scrap frame tubing and I muscle the BB to close up the angle.  I'll get 2-3 degrees with this and rest by selectively removing material from the insides of the lug ports.
I decided to go ahead and buy the 43.95 mm ream.

We are off to follow the Tour of California......

Thursday, May 1, 2014

All the materials for Robins frame are now here.  S3, HOXPLAT, Columbus, Paragon, etc.  All the good stuff.
I tried a number of seat post clamps, and they all looked so out of place. The clamp interrupted the nice flow of the frame.  So, I bonded the seat post to the seat tube and it looks great.  I realize that this is heretical in so many ways, but I just had to do it.  Now, do I paint the post to match the seat tube?  Dunno yet..............