Seat stays

It's always fun when those last two tubes get mitered up, ready to go on. The frame goes from a collection of tubes to an identifiable frame.

So this is the setup I've decided to use for the seatstay mitering. They join just a tad more aft than what I usually do - this will make the gap between them a tad (that's an important technical term - a little more than a squidge, but less than a mite) less than usual.



The plan is to make a silver preform and put this inside the tube, then heat and flow it out. This way I end up with minimal fillet on the outside (so I can polish the lug and have a maskable line), and a decent fillet on the inside, for a nice strong join.



I used just two tools to construct these fillets - a hacksaw and my 300mm half round second cut file.

Oh, and yes, that is a hair elastic holding the seat stays in position.