Geoff Roberts Framebuilding course - first and second, and third frames. And fourth (now finished). And fifth.

I really enjoy your in-depth reports on the process, so this is a welcome update! Frame is looking promising

At 2.30am this morning I woke up from a deep sleep and said 'FUCK!!!!' very loudly as I'd just realised I'd forgotten to drill holes in the bottom bracket shell for the chainstays. Normally this would be mildly inconvenient, but in this case I need to have those holes to allow the rear derailleur Di2 wire to go down the driveside chainstay and the rear caliper hose to go down the non-driveside chainstay, so they're not really optional. So I spent an hour or so removing the chainstays from the BB shell, drilling the holes, cleaning up the chainstays and BB shell, and tacking them back into place.

Next job was to file and attach the seatstays. The seatstays are a hoop made of T45 steel, 1/2" with 0.90mm wall thickness, bent into a hoop with a £20 tube bender I bought off eBay, which did a surprisingly good job. The monostay at the top is a bit of random chainstay courtesy of Geoff which I've flattened in a vice so that it's 1/2" thick. Brazed together, and roughly filed, here it is in a very poorly framed photo:

With that in place, it was time to braze the dropouts to the chainstays and seatstays. The dropouts (Paragon Machine Works hooded Syntace X-12 dropouts) are stainless, so they need to be brazed with silver rather than brass. It's my first time fillet brazing with silver rather than brass, but the Cycle Design was surprisingly forgiving and I think it went OK for a first attempt. Other than the fact that I used so much flux it stuck the dummy axle to the dropout...

Next job was to fillet braze the monostay onto the back of the seat tube, having remembered to drill a hole in the back of the seat tube. That's Geoff on the left having a Nice Cup of Tea, and @Jingle_Jangle's elbow on the right.

Final job for the day was to fillet braze the down tube, seat tube and chainstays onto the bottom bracket shell. That's a lot of brazing, and will as ever take a hell of a lot of filing and general tidying, but it's done now.

Fiddly bits tomorrow, after Geoff the magic shot-blasting pixie has done his work - I'm not allowed to use the shotblasting cabinet. Health and Safety gorn mad...

Pictures don't embed for me. Can open them in a new tab though. Anyone else?

Interesting build though.

I can see the pictures just fine, but the problem is that there hasn’t been an update in 3 months :)

Has this been resolved yet?

Work in progress. Getting there.

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Ready for paint. I would've liked to have had more time to do some more filing and polishing, but I need to finish it. It needs to be in Vienna working and good to go in 12 days...

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Primer done. Rest of the paint tomorrow.

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Base coat. Shiny shiny silver.

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That looks great!

Doesn't look like that any more, thanks to 3 coats of graphite pearl. Clearcoat first thing tomorrow.

What are the mounts on the wishbone for?

Rear lights.

Effect coat (graphite pearl) and clearcoat done.

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And fork to match.

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Superb.

Time to start on the next one!

No. 5 is on the way - nearly finished the front triangle.

In no. 4 news, internal wiring and hoses are once again a total pain. Seems like a good idea when you're building the frame, less of a good idea when building the bike up. Still, I'm getting there. Rear dynamo-powered light with internal wiring in place:

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It's aliiiiiive...

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Cor. Would love to build (i.e. buy / have someone build) a bike with all the cables channeled into the tubes :(

Trust me, you really wouldn't want to build it yourself... Royal PITA.

More pics...

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Looks amazing. Is the Dynamo and Disc part of the same unit?

But what you have is amazing now :)

So is this your transcontinental rig or something?

Looks stunning!