M_V's multitude of bikes and adventures in the land of framebuilding

Glad to see Steve Coogan found a buyer for his old Pauline Calf outfits

Totally jealous of @Hulsroy most recent project so I spent last night trawling eBay for knackered frames and have bought this Holdsworth which has a stuck post and a crack/tear in the seattube.

I reckon the post would be removable with enough effort but with the damage to the tube and the rather agricultural looking lug I reckon something more extreme is in order.

I wonder if I could cut the tube 1/2 way down as with Hulsroy’s one but then sleeve a larger diameter tube directly over the remnants of the original seattube...

It’s probably going to get track ends too since I’m itching to do a conversion to them and I don’t ride gears.

3 Attachments

Do it! But take care and don't mention my name to the police :)

Thought I’d make a start on replacing the chainstays on my Flying Scot today.

1 Attachment

Things escalated quickly.

2 Attachments

Everything was just breaking up and tearing when I was trying to pull it apart.

The dropout broke off inside the chainstay, the chainstay pretty much fell apart at the bb lug and the seatstay broke off when I tried to pull the dropout out of it.

So, an entire new rear end it is.

Decided that since I’d totally fucked up the back end I might as well make it a proper puppy slaying and have the cable guides, pump pegs and shifter bosses off it too.

My mate Seb fancied a rack for deliverooing and touring and as he runs drops one of the small racks I made was a good fit for him.

3 Attachments

The Holdsworth arrived yesterday and the sellers claim of, “Apart from the seatpost issue the frame is in good shape, straight and no dents.” wasn’t exactly true.

The rear triangle is squashed down to 115mm and the driveside dropout has taken a knock which has closed it up.

I couldn’t decide whether or not to do anything about it, it was only £15 plus postage, I was planning on changing the dropouts anyway and opening the rear back up shouldn’t really be an issue. It annoyed me that the seller had claimed there were no issues other than the post though so I opened a PayPal dispute and asked for a 50% refund.

Did that after midnight last night and when I got up this morning the seller has accepted it and sent me the refund. No messages, no arguments, just a refund. That suggests to me they knew it was fucked.

Oh well, £7.50 For a Holdsworth f&f is pretty good eh?!

5 Attachments

So doing some measuring of the Holdsworth.

The seattube is 28.6mm od.
The toptube is 25.4mm od.

I have some 28.6mm id cromo tubing that'd slip right over the remnants of the seattube after I cut the seized bit out and I could shim it down to 27.2mm to fit a nice post in.

Trouble is that that tubing is 31.8mm od so it wouldn't sit nicely into the remnants of the seat lug a'la @Hulsroy one.

I could get a whole new seat lug but so far I can't find one for a 31.8mm seattube and a 25.4mm top tube.

I could sleeve the toptube and then fit an oversized lug but with a fairly slender 25.4mm toptube I think this could look a bit clumsy.

I think the better option might be to cut most of the seat lug away, creating a 31.8mm mitre on the end of the toptube with the remnants of the seat lug acting as reinforcement and do a fillet braze to the new seat tube.

Doing it that way might, I think, make removing the seized post a bit easier too.

The latter option will also result in a much cooler pseudo bilaminate lug look.

Brought the Holdsworth into work with me today.

The frame alignment tool seems to have gone walkies but I’ve gotten it spread to 120mm and as far as I can tell it’s centred.

Bottom bracket has been putting up a fight, it’s all out now bar the adjustable cup which seems to be pretty well seized. It’s also a pretty hard steel it’s made of so I’m not going down the route of cutting it out. Yet.

I opened up the driveside dropout pretty easily to allow me to get acwheel in and double check the alignment but the dropouts are going anyway.

Started making some cuts and decided it was going to be easiest to get the seat stays right out the way. My plan had been to leave the rear triangle as intact as possible, reattach the seat stays up top then do the dropouts but it would have been really difficult to do the mitre in the toptube/seat lug with the stats there.

The seat stays are still attached to each other by the brake bridge (which I think I want to change out for something less agricultural) but I’ll see how easy it is attaching them to the dropouts lijevthis. Might have to separate them.

Quite happy with the job I did of cutting the stats off the seatlug, seems like a bit of filing and sanding and they’ll be good to go back on.

Cutting the mitre was a nightmare, so difficult to get a good angle on it.

I’m happy with how it’s ended up though, perhaps a bit more fine tuning to be done with the files.

6 Attachments

Is this an exercise in frame-building?

Because surely melting the seat post out with caustic soda would've been easier.

Final pic, that looks pretty damn central. Loving all the frame butchers/builders work on the forum at the moment. If I had a bigger shed.....

That might have been an easier option but with the seattube already being torn/cracked from the previous owners removal attempts, it would have really only constituted half the job.

The ‘proper’ job would probably have been full replacement of the seattube but I have another frame coming that’s going to need that kind of repair.

Laid up with a sinus infection this week but managed to get the seized bb cup shifted and brazed the slip over joint on the Holdsworth today.

3 Attachments

Silver seems to have made penetrated the joint pretty thoroughly.

Turns out the original seatpost size was 27.2mm so I’m gonna use a long 27.2 post, shimmed at the top of the new section and it should reach down into the old bit of the seattube which I imagine might add a bit of structural integrity.

Love the flux for silver, just washes right away.

2 Attachments

That said, I gave the boric acid powder that @coldharbour suggested as flux for brass brazing another shot today and finally had some success with it.

Stuck this stem in a tub in the bath as I was pouring a kettle of water over the frame above it and the flux, a lot of which was very hard and glassy, came right off.

Cheers for the recommendation and advice about this @coldharbour.

2 Attachments

Top tube to seattube braze done today. Front triangle is once again complete.

1 Attachment

Gas pipe stem no.2.

Just needs drilling and slotting now.

Got a new (to me) toy to do the slotting with.

3 Attachments

Some updates coming soon...

Knowing I had a while laid up, not cycling to recover from some minor surgery, I sent the Pomp and the frame I built myself off for powdercoating.

Clear for my handbuilt frame (to show off the fillets) and olive green for the Pomp. I had been thinking something really bright like neon pink or green but the coater I've used before only has a basic range of colours, nothing very bright. I saw this olive green colour though and reckoned it'd work pretty well.

I did worry that it might be a touch boring without any decals though and I thought about getting some On One decals but I've modded the frame a bit (removed the rear brake fittings, tidied up the wishbone area, cleaned up the trackends by removing the eyelets, added one back in within the track end) so I wanted to put my own stamp on it and then I remembered seeing a Pomp with Brooklyn stickers.

I'd found it quite funny but didn't want to quite go down the 'fake' Brooklyn route so as seen above, got busy with the scalpel and I present, the Borklyn.

5 Attachments

That color is great.

I wonder if one of your improvements was to fill the gap between the dt and the reinforcement plate with brass?
That spot is always where the rust starts on the ones I had.

And the clear powder on the handmade frame looks pretty sweet too imo.

5 Attachments

More...

5 Attachments

Also, clear looks great. The fillets are very Mercredi 🙃