Well after 9 miters, 11 brazes, and countless hours of work, the front triangle and chainstays were ready to be joined. And after a solid day of cleaning, sanding, cleaning, fluxing, tacking, checking alignment, and brazing, it was in fact together. And it was good. The brazes came out pretty smooth, so not too much *extra* work to smooth them out afterwards. And alignment is not too shabby. The worst part is that the non-drive chainstay ended up getting brazed just a hair further towards the middle of the bottom bracket. But the only way you can even tell is that the wheel is slightly closer to that side. But the wheel is straight, and should track quite nicely. (I guess I only checked the alignment after tacking in the jig. I didn't think to check the exact position of the joint. Yet another lesson that needed to be learned.)
But overall, I think this is going to turn out quite nice. Short chainstays will make it lively and stiff. Tube selection will be light, but not noodly light. And of course customness will make it awesome! Just need to do some custom seatstay action, cut down the seat and head tubes, and a few finishing touches, and she'll be ready for paint.
All the pictures, all the time:
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