Originally Posted by
gugie
@
scarlson might want to chime in, but hack out the head tube, file it nicely and fillet braze in a new one, it’d be a bilaminate construction.
Not worth paying someone to do it, but it could be done.
I could do that, sure.
I sorta did that on my Holdsworth Claud Butler which had a cracked lug, and it is holding up well, years of hard commuting later. But I wouldn't do bilaminate for this bike. The lugs here are intact!
Originally Posted by
cudak888
Or die-grind the headlugs from the inside until a new tube can slide into both and re-braze.
I would flay (fillet?) the head tube with a hacksaw blade, heat the lugs up a bit, and peel out the head tube fragments with vise grips from inside the lugs, being careful not to distort the lugs too much or melt the braze holding them to the top and downtubes. Then the angles could be tweaked to get everything lined up properly by bending things around, then clean it well, slide a new head tube in with flux, a dab of braze, and bob's your uncle. You'd also need to ream the new head tube to take the headset. The bike is very cool and possibly worth it if you wanted to try your hand. If you were in the area I'd offer. It would be fun. You could also add proper cable and water bottle braze-ons. Put on posts for cantis or centerpulls if you don't like those anemic sidepulls. Get a wet paint job to preserve the chrome socks, maybe with contrasting color in those dots. It would be a bangin ride after all that.
Originally Posted by
cudak888
It's obvious there was some tension in the frame seeing as the top of the tube pulled back too. Perhaps the mitering was slightly off and the builder forced the HT into position and brazed it in under tension?
I don't know if we can say that for sure. The bike was likely ridden with the crack, and I'm assuming the headset was adjusted right for the headtube before it broke. The fork would want to move front to back and side to side during riding. The two halves of the head tube would be getting wedged all over as the balls try to climb out of their races in response to bike and rider's weight, brakes, bumps, etc. In my view we are lucky they are still as aligned as they appear to be.