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Was doing some Swains laps and saw a chap riding a grey Surly Pacer. Lo and behold, it was @mrtea659 on the frame I sold him a couple of years ago. Nice to see it being put to use.

The Chromecast audios are great, got a couple dotted around the house. Been doing some renovations and that's let me get some old hifi bits up a running.

I've got a really simple setup running the Chromecast into an early Mission Cyrus One and a pair of Mordaunt-Short 3.10 speakers. Had a dry joint on one of the amp inputs, but that was easy to sort. Sounds lovely.

I have Hope skewers on a couple of bikes. They aren't the company's finest hour, let's say. The adjustment point for good bite while still being able to open and close them alright is pretty narrow.

Agree about the Shimano QRs, rock solid. Lizard Skins is nice, the thicker stuff is comfy and durable. I also rate the Arundel Gecko Grip tape.

Out of interest, I know the Tracer is good with mudguards and a decent size tyre, how much clearance do you have between the rear tyre and the back of the seat tube?

@coldharbour has way more building experience than me, but in my opinion the gouges aren't too much of a concern. The alloy will be pretty thick, and there's a substantial amount of weld

Typically brake bridges are mitred to match the profile of the stays, what that means is that it normally grips around the stay (like this).

It's pretty firmly wedged in. The other side looks fine, so even in the very worst case it's likely to twist, rather than break away.

The bubbling paint looks like water (or sweat, most likely) has got in under the cable adjuster mount. Might be worth giving that a poke with a sharp point to make sure it's solid under there. I've seen sweat corrode right though an alloy handlebar. Unlikely in this case, most likely it's surface oxidation on the tube debonding the paint, as Howard says.

Heh. Struggled to find something I liked with reasonable puncture protection in a 32mm.

No doubt by the time I've worn these out everyone will have mahoosive tyres available. WLTB Michelin Pro 4 Endurance in a 32mm

Didn't get around to creating a current projects thread for this bike, but I've just finished building up my first TIG welded frame. I decided to make myself a light-duty tourer/b road basher.

Columbus Zona tubing, 44mm headtube, Kinesis CX Disc fork, TRP brakes, 105 11 speed with a 32t cassette. Looking forward to giving the 32mm Gatorskins a go. Plushy! Built the wheels myself too.

Paint is by Cole Coatings in Peckham, who did an outstanding job.

If the seat post clamps from top and bottom you should be alright. I was running it with a Ritchey Link seat post and it worked fine, no adapter needed.

The rails are ovalised, but I think only side clamping posts like Enve need adapters.

Cheers, will drop you a line.

Updated to reflect sold items.

Having a clear out of my surplus bike supplies, so I have a few things for sale.

I live in North London (Finsbury Park), work central(ish), if you would like any of them. Pick up from my place or I can meet you, whatever works best.

Brooks B17 Narrow, Chestnut Leather, £45

Bought for a project that never materialised, has sat in the loft unused for a long time as a result.

SOLD - Cambium C13 carbon rail saddle, £75

SOLD - Brooks Swift, black leather, steel rails, copper rivets, £40

SOLD - Velo Orange Model 3 Touring Saddle, £30

SOLD - Unused Ultegra 6800 front and rear brakes, £40

Agonizing to watch, although he did nearly win the race twice.

Well, this is my first build done on a commercial basis. It's for a friend, but he wanted it treated like a standard custom build. That's prompted me into sorting out liability insurance and a host of other things.

At the moment it's a part-time thing, but if I can turn a profit while doing something I enjoy then I'm going to give it a go. I can't just build them for me & the better half, I'll run out of space & money!

Yeah, may well do that, I find that the Starett cutters can be a bit "grabby" especially if you're near an edge. Have you used the Strawberry or Academy Tools mitre cutters? They look a lot more robust, but are comparatively expensive..

Some more in-progress shots. First couple are details of the tacks, used to hold everything together while you braze the frame. The material is incorporated into the pool of molten brazing alloy as you work around the joint.

I always tack down the centreline of the frame, but I've also added a couple of extras on the side to help make things a bit more stable.

And then here are couple of the fillets post-brazing. The red marks are where I've decided to do a bit more tidying up. You can get a fillet that looks finished to the eye, but when you run your fingers over it you can feel small bumps and inconsistencies.

A relatively short head tube on this frame meant I had to integrate the top and down tube brazes, but I'm pretty pleased with the way they came out.

Also, I was getting some practice in with TIG welding today. I have built a TIG frame, but it started to feel a lot more natural today. This is a joint on 1.3mm to 0.7mm tubing, using a stainless steel filler wire. Planning on building a through-axle CX bike for myself over the winter. Going to weld it, rather than braze.

Yeah, costs are very driven by tubing. A set of decent quality tubing, plus the head tube, BB, dropouts and braze ons would start at £150 - £200, you also need flux and brazing rod.

You can keep costs down by buying heavier, plain gauge 4130 tubing, which isn't a bad place to start. If you do want to have a try let me know, I have some practice lugs knocking about that I don't need.

Nice work, looking forward to seeing how the full build looks.

I find fillet brazing (and brazing in general) works best if you're relaxed and take things easy. When you try to 'force' it by using too aggressive a heat or try to speed it up then it can go wrong.

I've used the PDW mudguards on a build and had to bend the stay a touch to route it under the caliper. They are nice and stable once everything is installed, though.

For my first few frames I hand cut all the tube mitres, mainly because I was learning how to file well. More recently I've started machine cutting the tubes, which is giving me some nice results, and overall is a fair bit faster.

Fortunately I have access to some nice fixtures that help keep everything centered and accurate. I'm using Starrett bi-metal hole saws, which work pretty well. They're available in lots of sizes so you can almost always get a really tight match on the mitres. There are other cutters on the market, but I've not had chance to try them out yet.

Tight mitres help in the build process, as they minimise movement during brazing. That results in a better alignment for the frame. It's also really good if you're TIG welding (which I do as well) as TIG doesn't tolerate gaps anywhere like as well as brazing, as the joint area is a lot smaller and the tube edges are liable to getting burnt back if they are exposed.

All other things being equal it'll slacken off the head angle of the bike and change the trail. Ritchey do make an 1 1/8 inch straight carbon disc fork in 395mm, but it's more expensive than the Kinesis by a fair margin.

http://ritcheylogic.com/cross/forks/wcs-carbon-disc-cross-bike-fork.html

Hiya, yeah got that sorted thank you. And thanks for the tip about the CXD, will definitely look at that as an option. Especially as for now everyone is out of stock of everything!

I wanted to use the Whisky No7, I've put it on a previous build, but it's currently unavailable, with no restock ETA.

TRP should have their 12mm through axle eyleted CX fork in the country soon, and there's also the Enigma Ecroix fork.

The options are slowly expanding, but Whisky are a bit unreliable in their supply management, it seems.

It depends on what you regard as massive clearances, really. It'll take 38mm tyres, and can run 35mm with mudguards with a decent amount of room. The clearances on forks seem to be more of a variable, ranging from 35mm to 40mm. I'm not getting into monster cross with this one!

I've made the TT more dropped than the traditional squarer CX bike style to expose a decent amount of seat post, the thinking being to allow it to do more work over rougher surfaces. Obviously the tyre pressures are going make a major contribution there.

I've been popping up in the new project thread for a while now, as and when I build a frame. To date they've been for me and family.

That changed a little while back, when a friend approached me to build him a bike for use on bad roads, cyclocross jaunts, and he wants to ride Roubaix next year. It's my first commercial commission, which I'm excited about, and has also been a spur for me to go ahead and book a slot exhibiting at Bespoked in 2016.

The build is in progress now. Columbus Zona tubing with Paragon Machine works disc dropouts, tapered CF fork. It'll work with CX or fat road tyres, and have mounting for mudguards too. Groupset is SRAM Force 1 hydraulic a 1x11 setup. So rather than being a 'pure' CX bike this is in that expanding niche of bikes built to cover a range of riding styles.

I'd like to take you through some of the thinking I've applied and techniques I've used during the design and build.

Here's the design sketch from BikeCAD.

And the frame parts laid out and ready to go.

Cheers!

You're absolutely right. I've worked on a few IF bikes. I've had a Ti one that was eating expensive BBs because there was no drain hole, when I removed the BB shells there was loads of water in there. And I've seen another steel IF that rotted out at the base of the seat tube.

A builder is taking a pretty big chance assuming that water's not going to get into a frame at some point, so I can't understand why you wouldn't provide a route for it to get out.

That looks like it could be a crack on the edge of the weld, which would be a right bother. What did the LBS say?