unterhausen

I decided to go with flat stainless steel caps on the frame I'm building right now. That pretty much means I had to use nickle silver to attach them, because brazing the lugs to the stays with silver would be a little tenuous if the caps were put on with silver. Nickle silver on stainless wets out, as you can see in my pics, but I have always had a little trouble with it on stainless. Nickle silver has a little bit higher melting temp than LFB, but they are very similar. I'm fairly happy with how it came out. I could have been a little more careful on the part above the stay. I didn't want to mess around cleaning up with the torch on the stainless. Kinda wish I had a belt grinder though. First side is almost filed, took about 15 minutes, but I didn't take a pic yet.

MVIMG_20190307_152033278 by unterhausen, on Flickr
MVIMG_20190307_152649931 by unterhausen, on Flickr

IMG_20190307_152654717 by unterhausen, on Flickr

MVIMG_20190307_184802960 by unterhausen, on Flickr

MVIMG_20190307_184833101 by unterhausen, on Flickr

unterhausen

I was thinking about just using steel, but I didn't have any. They used to sell seatstay caps, but I only had one, so I traced it onto the stainless and cut it with a wheel on the dremel. The stainless goes through hacksaw blades like crazy. It also wiped out my cutoff blade on the dremel.

As you can see, I just cut them a little big. It really doesn't take all that long to file them down.

I need a little more practice with nickle silver and stainless to be really happy with it. It's easy to overheat the stainless at the temperature where nickle silver flows. I got a lot more comfortable while doing these caps, so I'm going to attach the stays with nickle silver. When I was at Trek, we used nickle silver where any sane person would have used LFB. I think I developed a slight sensitivity to it there, so I don't use it much.

wsteve464

Not sure what kind of belt sander you are referring to but I use one similar to this

https://www.amazon.com/Bandfile-Sand.../dp/B005XFUTC6

Takes 1/2 inch belts in a variety of grits. Works good

unterhausen

belt grinder https://www.kalamazooind.com/product...-belt-grinder/
A lot of people DIY a 3 wheel version, which seems more useful.
I have a pneumatic handheld belt sander, but I wouldn't really want to use it on this.

Andrew R Stewart 

I have a Kalamazoo 1x42 belt sander. I use it a lot and in a dream shop it would be a 2" wide version. I also would have a second with a coarser grit then the 80 I usually run.

But for SS cap plates I use a bench grinder to remove the bulk of the extra plate first. Andy

unterhausen

I'm sticking with files right now. The newer nicholson green label files seem to be fairly close to their old MUSA quality. I got the caps shaped to my satisfaction, going to braze the stays on in a bit

unterhausen

oh, and if anyone wants to post their seat stay cap pics, please do

JohnDThompson 

For this frame, I made the caps out of a piece to the top tube scrap.

unterhausen

Thanks John. I thought about doing that style, Was thinking about using a stainless tube for the cap. For some reason, flat caps just appealed to me on this build. But maybe the next one will have Proteus style fastback, who knows?

Andrew R Stewart 

This is what I've been working on lately. Kind of got caught between a fluted classic and a fast back (sounds like a bad vacation marriage). The concave section is a piece of tube brassed on. The stay was then silvered on the lug which was brassed to make then silvered for the joint. Andy