Quote Originally Posted by G-reg View Post
I'm a fan of everything you do, but for some reason how you are welding/brazing these braces speak to me. How do you get that look? Are the braces mitered differently?603848_516963485007915_698841493_n.jpg
I first dial in the bend of the seat stay bridge:



These are then carefully hand fitted with files. Then I grab a little trick from my gold smithing days: I hammer/file the ends of the miter to get more relief of a kind of "lug" shoreline. All I'm doing is visually building up the ends of that .035" wall thickness tube to get the look down. Then I simple silver braze them in place. Clean up with a bit of emory and it's ready for action:

Here it is fitted:



Then here it is just before it was brazed in place:



This same technique is used when raising volumes from flat sheet in semi-precious (copper) or precious (silver/gold) materials. Often the material thins as you're raising it through several phases. You're stretching and pushing the material up. This isn't a harsh process, but very deliberate and delicate work. Often you can hammer / planish the edges to increase the visual look of the weight of the edges. I do this same technique with these bridges once they are bent/mitered/fitted. All I simply do is file them a bit and occasionally lightly planish the edges to increase their perceived wall thickness. It's subtle as you can see, but it creates that definite shore line. The added benefit I've found from brazing these in as opposed to welding them in place is that it doesn't draw the dropout faces inwards as opposed to Tig welding them in place which I really like.