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.