ray's bike, keri's bike, and attempt to awnser lee's question.

first - a couple quick pics. ray was by this morning doing some assembly on his touring bike. looking sweet! pretty much an all 2008 deore xt build with some thomson and chris king goodies. a sensible, durable build. also, got keri's bike all brazed and soaked the flux off. looking good! gonna go biking tomorrow and start polishing it up on Saturday. i think it's gonna go to the handmade bike show as a raw frame so folks can see what's under the paint. next, preskit matt's bike is up, then frank from washington dc and cameron. {frank - get ahold of me!} sooooo...... in the last post's comments lee from reno asked about heat distortion from welding and brazing. does metal distort from these methods of joinery? you bet! how do you minimise distortion? 1: make sure everything fits really tight. gaps in your miters are a big cause of mis-alignment, and to eventual frame/joint failure. 2: always follow a "welding sequence", the series of events when tacking and brazing or welding that produces the same result - usually that of ending up with a straight frame. everyone seems to have a different one that works for them, and you follow it religiously to have repetitively reliable results. 3: knowing your joining method and having it down. a quick braze with an even pre-heat and even distribution of filler will result in less uneven pulling on the structure as the filler returns from it's molten state to it's frozen state. {see keri's frame - the brazes are all even width} 4: heat distortion that has occurred must be taken care of before you receive your frame. the bottombracket threads are chased, the shell faces are faced parallel to each other, the headtube is faced and chased, and the seat tube is polished - i don't get distortion in it due to my hand-made seat tube sleeve. 5: you notice the seemingly obsessive use of the alignment table every time something is tacked? that's to make gradual tiny adjustments to the frame to adjust to the small amounts of twist and pull imparted to the structure due to distortion so the result is a straight frame not needing a big amount of post brazing "cold setting" {a fancy way to say "bending"} anymore questions? i'm more then glad to help field frame building Q&A's to help you all understand what's going on here, and it's good brain exercise for me as well! any of you frameforum guys lurking here??? steve.