Tuesday, January 11, 2011

More forks today


Today I'm in fork mode but the fork in the picture is not for one of my bikes. Its for a 3Rensho and I really hope I captured the look good enough considering what I was able to get in the way of materials. The crown is one I haven't used for many years but I might start using them more as the fit of the tubes was perfect. I also liked the way the crown heated and how easily the whole piece came together.
Even though the crown is shiny it is not stainless steel. I'm not a big proponent of stainless and try to avoid working with it as it reacts to heat differently than most bicycle steels . With stainless one has to use special fluxes which in my opinion are inferior than standard flux. i don't feel that I can get as good a result with stainless, although painted steel is not as flashy. There you go, I said it-take it with a grain of salt......If you are wondering, the steerer was brazed with bronze, the blades and dropouts were silver soldered with 56 % and I did no cleanup on the shorelines . A coat of paint would effectively hide any work I did along the edges of the brazing so there was no incentive to work it to death-also , it saved this bike mechanic customer some money
These drouputs are pretty fancy but they are actually about the easiest to build with. Again, these fit really nice and the silver solder flowed really well.
Before I went home I built this unicrown 'cross fork.........definitely more my stock and trade. It is another 1" steerer like the other fork , and like the other fork it is going on an older bike.....this time it is one of mine from about 1993.

3 comments:

Javier Daniel Valencia Vedoy said...

in the wise words of Black Flag, GIMMIE GIMMIE GIMMIE

swiggco world said...

so that's who did that song.....

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