No Flux Between Lugs and Tubes

[waltz]

I goofed hard. I've been working on my track frame and I didn't flux the outside of the downtube before putting it in to the bottom bracket shell. I fluxed the outside and got to it.

I had a sliver of time to work on my frame and I was rushing. A recipe for disaster. The joint seemed to come together pretty well; though it was a little harder than usual to flow the brass.

I'm curious: How bad is this? My non-expert opinion is that it seems fine. What do the pros think?

[steve garro]

I didn't flux the outside of the downtube before putting it in to the bottom bracket shell

I fluxed the outside and got to it.

I had a sliver of time to work on my frame and I was rushing. A recipe for disaster. The joint seemed to come together pretty well; though it was a little harder than usual to flow the brass.

I'm curious: How bad is this? My non-expert opinion is that it seems fine. What do the pros think?

Could be real bad.

You'll never know without cutting it up, unfortunately.

- Garro.

[waltz]

Interesting!

Sounds like I should give this another shot. I'll get a replacement downtube and BB shell and start over.

Thanks for the feedback!

[progetto]

Did you have full penetration when you check inside the shell?

I goofed hard. I've been working on my track frame and I didn't flux the outside of the downtube before putting it in to the bottom bracket shell. I fluxed the outside and got to it.

I had a sliver of time to work on my frame and I was rushing. A recipe for disaster. The joint seemed to come together pretty well; though it was a little harder than usual to flow the brass.

I'm curious: How bad is this? My non-expert opinion is that it seems fine. What do the pros think?

[waltz]

Did you have full penetration when you check inside the shell?

It did seem like I had full penetration when I looked. The gotcha is that I added a little bit of brass from the inside of the shell. So, no way of knowing if it flowed all of the way through or if I had just filled up the shoreline on the inside of the joint.

I'll be able to get in to the shop later this week and I'll pull it apart and take some pictures for everyone. Hopefully someone else can learn from my goof.

[Eric Estlund]

Good deal. Marking it as an "oopsie" and starting over is a valuable skill, and far outweighs the value of a tube and bb shell.