Making It All Fit

It seems that things have slowed down on this project lately, I seem to have been without seat-stays for a long time. I think it's just the amount of fiddly work involved before fitting the seat-stays (getting the seat-stay top-eyes done, the rear end aligned, chain-stays crimped for chainring and disc rotor clearance, seat-stays bent for tyre clearance). Here's what the frame looks like with the rear wheel in place fitted with a 26x1.5" slick tyre (the seat-stay is just sitting in place for now). The tiny frame makes the wheel look pretty big. 

As for stay clearance, there's a little bit of room to allow for a buckled wheel at the chain-stay (left), but the seat-stays will need a little tweaking (right). 

I'm pretty happy with the top-eye though. This photo reminds me that I really should soak off the flux so this joint doesn't look so hideous. 

You may have spotted it above, but, I crimped the chain-stay for a disc rotor...  That's right, it's getting disc brakes! I managed to squeeze in a tiny 140mm disc with just a little bit of chain-stay crimping. 

Fillets & Trial Fitting

Today was a public holiday, a perfect day to work on a project. Huw and Tris thought the same thing and came in to Commuter Cycles for a bit of Men's Shed time. I got the brazing done pretty quickly and spent a lot of time filing the joints smooth. I also test fitted the cranks to check for chain-stay clearance (I will need to crimp the right chain-stay for chainring clearance) and fitted a hub and checked rear end alignment. With the rear end out of alignment and the chain-stay needing to be crimped, it might be a little longer yet before I can lock in the rear end with seat-stays and some bridges.

I can't get over how chunky this thing looks, especially with the Shimano cranks fitted, the frame looks stocky and kinda tough.

With a disc hub fitted, it's possible to estimate how much the left stay would need to be crimped to fit a disc in. That'd be some funky tube manipulation. As it is, the stays have S-bends for tyre clearance and crank-arm clearance as they splay out rather dramatically to fit a reasonably wide MTB hub (135 mm wide) over their super short length (385 mm centre to centre). At least a standard MTB wheel will fit, unlike the Fleet Velo Joust, a disc brake can be a challenge for my next bike.