refitting fillet brazed seat stays?

[squidskull]

hi there,
getting close to finishing up the first fillet brazed frame at home and in an unguided setting. there have been a multitude of mistakes and lessons learned; most , if not all of them are fine and the bike will be totally ridable as is, but in a total space out and focussing more on the fact the the frame was only missing the seatstays to look complete, i did a bad job a thinking about clearance and also didnt check before filleting it.

so the frame was intended to be able to run 700 x 45c tires, and the chainstays have plenty of clearance for that. but i used straight seatstays and brazed them on directly to the back of the seat tube, not the sides, and now have room for 35c tires and not much more. the question is: would it be a bad idea to remove the seat stays from the seat tube, file off all that brass, and fit seatstay caps on the ends to braze to the side of the seatube to yield more tire clearance??


ive already convinced myself that its fine for a first and was planning on putting the bridges on today, but looked at it and had a hint of hope that it would be fixable, but its sooo much heat for that tube at this point.

thanks

[Curt Goodrich]

Grind off the old stays. Get a new pair, cap them and silver braze them to the sides of the seat cluster. It's not ideal but if this is your first frame and not for sale it will do. BTW check out this thread- http://www.velocipedesalon.com/forum...tmo-36820.html

Update.

[afwalker]

Show a pic please. Go with Curt's suggestion, great opportunities come from mistakes, at least for learning.
Is your seat tube externally butted, what thickness?
It will takes lots of heat to melt the brass enough to pry the stay off. A grinding/then silver would be better than another blast hot enough for brass.
cheers
andy

[edoz]

You could also use s bend seatstays for more clearance, but yeah, grind off the originals and chuck them.

[jgrano]

I just ran into the same problem. I'll post some pictures of the process when I get to it.

[cicli polito]

best and proper way: do as curt mentioned. new stays. use a hacksaw, files and shop roll only for clean up of the old stays (no electric/pneumatic tools) and afterwards you will certainly never make this same mistake again.

alternately, since this is your first frame and as such should not be for sale, consider this an opportunity to work on "outside the box" fab skills. you only need ~5mm extra on each SS for your desired clearance. using 16 or 18mm stays? get out your biggest half round bastard file and file a scallop into the inside of the stays level with where the tire sits. then silver braze a scrap tube in that concave "hole" and then grind/file that flush to the stay so you have a neat little pocket for the tire to sit in. or take out a section of the stays entirely and braze/weld a new curved or angled section in. or cut and grind the stays just off the top section and ST and then fabricate a wishbone or monostay of your own design utilizing the section of the SS already brazed to the dropout. if these all sound dumb or like too much work, that's because, again, curt's suggestion is the proper way to do it. good luck.