# 8 minutes of hardcore fillet action



## dr.welby (Jan 6, 2004)




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## rodar y rodar (Jul 21, 2006)

Whoa! That guy don`t waste no time, eh?
Is that how a Gas Fluxer goes?


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## Clockwork Bikes (Jun 17, 2006)

Really impressive! I saw a clear coated Brompton at NAHBS and was really impressed with the heat control and consistency of the fillets, but this video gives me a new level of appreciation.


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## DWF (Jan 12, 2004)

Impressive as it is, the bottom line is that if you do the same thing over and over again you're bound to get good at it. Remember too that thicker materials are a lot easier to braze/weld than thin ones and heat control isn't anywhere near as important. I guess what I'm saying is don't compare what he's doing there to what you guys do with thin wall tubing. It's apples to oranges.


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## marks_bike (Aug 22, 2006)

Wow, I really suck! Thanks for posting this.


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## coconinocycles (Sep 23, 2006)

I just did these & they are going to get painted straight away. I'll take some post dunk tank photos later & a couple post-paint.
Steve Garro, Coconino Cycles.


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## marks_bike (Aug 22, 2006)

Steve, you have a gas fluxer right? What's the reason for adding the extra paste flux? --Mark


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## coconinocycles (Sep 23, 2006)

marks_bike said:


> Steve, you have a gas fluxer right? What's the reason for adding the extra paste flux? --Mark


If you are going to do a no-file fillet of any size then you need to pull out every trick you have! 
- Steve Garro, Coconino Cycles.


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## jgerhardt (Aug 31, 2009)

So, with the gas fluxer do you not need to use paste? Or is the paste just something that gives a better/cleaner bond?


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## Feldybikes (Feb 17, 2004)

In addition to the brazing speed, I'm impressed with how slick the fixture is: how quick and ballanced the repositioning is.


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## Peter E (Feb 16, 2004)

I see why they call it braze welding. 

At about 2 min the tube looks quite hot/yellow. It this ok? I try to keep them orange. I'm a newbi and I have started to suspect that one of the reasons my filets does not always turn out perfect is that I'm so afraid of overheating that I sometimes braze at too low temperature. Is this bright orange/yellow within the ok range?


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## mickuk (Jul 6, 2007)

He needs to be quick and clean - Brompton handmade over 28,000 bikes in 2010!

I'd disagree on the earlier comment about thicker materials - it is much harder to (fillet) braze thick and thin parts together (way too easy to cook the thin bits). And whilst it isn't butted 853, it is most definitely not made from thickwall steel gas pipe! The centre part in that video is made from thin folded flat sheet - get the heat wrong and that will distort all over the place.


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## David C (May 25, 2011)

mickuk said:


> He needs to be quick and clean - Brompton handmade over 28,000 bikes in 2010!


You sure ? That's a lot of bikes for a single brand... do they manufactured for other brand too ?

David


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## mickuk (Jul 6, 2007)

Very sure about the +28,000 - google it or read the book on Brompton Bikes (there is a graph of annual production for the last umpteen years). They have never been able to meet demand but do manage to grow in production volume every year. Their website is still talking about expanding the factory / training more people! Amazing for a single product, and the factory is right in London so not exactly a cheap place to base a manufacturing business.

So if that guy can make one assembly in 8 mins then it is going to take +2 guys flat out all year just to satisfy demand for that component! I think they value their brazers, so guess they get to move round different jobs.


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## shiggy (Dec 19, 1998)

marks_bike said:


> Steve, you have a gas fluxer right? What's the reason for adding the extra paste flux? --Mark


Using both makes it MUCH easier and faster to lay down a good join.


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## Yoriel79 (Oct 4, 2011)

Very very beautiful


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## G-reg (Jan 12, 2004)

Damn, they took it down before I could watch it. Anyone know of other good videos? The few I've found don't show what's going on very well or the guy with the torch looks like they know about as much as I do about good technique. 

Mr. Garro, 
You are my hero, and own the only blog I actually read anymore. Any chance that camera of yours can capture video?


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## coconinocycles (Sep 23, 2006)

G-reg said:


> Mr. Garro,
> You are my hero, and own the only blog I actually read anymore. Any chance that camera of yours can capture video?


Thanks!!!!!!! I'll look into it. 
Steve Garro, Coconino Cycles.


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## David C (May 25, 2011)

mickuk said:


> Very sure about the +28,000 - google it or read the book on Brompton Bikes (there is a graph of annual production for the last umpteen years). They have never been able to meet demand but do manage to grow in production volume every year. Their website is still talking about expanding the factory / training more people! Amazing for a single product, and the factory is right in London so not exactly a cheap place to base a manufacturing business.
> 
> So if that guy can make one assembly in 8 mins then it is going to take +2 guys flat out all year just to satisfy demand for that component! I think they value their brazers, so guess they get to move round different jobs.


28 000 complete bikes ? 28 000 parts ok, but it will take at least a few others 8min strikes to get a full frame welded together... And who's ordering so much bikes ? Just wondering about it. Do they manufacture for Trek, Giant, etc ?

Thanks,

David


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## dr.welby (Jan 6, 2004)

David C said:


> 28 000 complete bikes ?


According to Wikipedia :

"Approximately 22,000 bicycles are produced by the company each year"


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## David C (May 25, 2011)

dr.welby said:


> According to Wikipedia :
> 
> "Approximately 22,000 bicycles are produced by the company each year"


Yeah, folding bikes... Not a big deal then. I thought they were doing mtb, so that's why I was impressed...

:thumbsup:

David


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## mickuk (Jul 6, 2007)

What? - not a big deal just because they aren't mtbs...?... Thats almost like the Trek CEOs laughable quote about the Chinese starting to take cycling seriously! (seriously meaning put it in the back of an SUV and drive 50 miles to use it).

Maybe you should read up on Brompton and find out about the number of parts and tolerances needed to make a straight, durable, light and compact folding bike that they can manufacture profitably in England (not Taiwan or China) and sell in huge numbers for a premium price. 

They are a very common sight in European cities and sell loads in Japan. They've almost become a status symbol for people that actually think about integrated transport. A friend has been using them for 20 years - a 20 second fold and it stashes under the table in the pub!

And if you actually read about the company and sales figures it was 10,000 ish in 1994, 22,000 was about 2008 - 2009, +28,000 was 2010 and who knows how many in 2011.


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## highdelll (Oct 3, 2008)

*vid removed by user*


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## David C (May 25, 2011)

highdelll said:


> *vid removed by user*


Whaaaaaa !!!! No... Awww...


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## shiggy (Dec 19, 1998)

coconinocycles said:


> I just did these & they are going to get painted straight away. I'll take some post dunk tank photos later & a couple post-paint.
> Steve Garro, Coconino Cycles.


Here is a raw video I shot of Garro doing a HT join in under 5 minutes.
http://mtbtires.com/site2/video/garro.mp4


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## mickuk (Jul 6, 2007)

Actually - re-reading Dave C's comment I'm talking a bit out of my ass - I guess there probably isn't a market for 20-odd thousand fillet brazed mtb frames  ........


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## doug fattic (Mar 11, 2010)

This video was posted on the web by Londoner Matt Wilkinson. He is a guy in his thirties that got a grant from the Winston Churchill foundation to study framebuilding in the States for a month. He spent the first week in my class doing a fillet brazed transportation type of frame. Then he went to the East Coast and finally the West coast to visit quite a number of both large and small bicycle building operations. He wrote/writes about his adventures in his blog – ninelittletubes. I got a nice personal letter from the foundation thanking me for providing him some help.

The reason he wanted to come to the States is because the professional British builders tend to be a lot more close-mouthed about passing on their skills to new comers. When I did my apprenticeship at Ellis-Briggs in Yorkshire the 70’s, I tried to visit as many framebuilders in the UK as possible. Almost everyone told me they would only share information with me because I was American.

To me it is interesting that he represents a reversal of framebuilding information. We Americans had to go to Europe to learn how to build frames when the bike boom started in the 70’s (except for the classes Albert Eisentraut taught).

He applied for a job at Brampton when he got back and they gave him a job after he passed a brazing test. He got in a bit of trouble posting this video on the web and his bosses made him take it down.

I found the video more interesting than impressive. It shows a professional that is very good at his job. I’m sure that if I took my camcorder to Steve’s Coconino shop, he could handle a torch with equal abilities doing a fillet braze. I thought the little fixture he used way cool.


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## dr.welby (Jan 6, 2004)

doug fattic said:


> He applied for a job at Brompton when he got back and they gave him a job after he passed a brazing test. He got in a bit of trouble posting this video on the web and his bosses made him take it down.


Thanks for the inside scoop, Doug.

I hope the bosses read this and reconsider. It was great marketing and they should take pride in the efforts they put into making a quality product. Evidently both their tooling and their craftsman are top-notch. My opinion of them went from just another weirdo folding bike to a highly-engineered, premium quality bicycle. I now think their price is entirely justified for what you are getting. Heck, I almost want to buy one, and I don't even need a folding bike since I work from home!


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## David C (May 25, 2011)

dr.welby said:


> Thanks for the inside scoop, Doug.
> 
> I hope the bosses read this and reconsider. It was great marketing and they should take pride in the efforts they put into making a quality product. Evidently both their tooling and their craftsman are top-notch. My opinion of them went from just another weirdo folding bike to a highly-engineered, premium quality bicycle. I now think their price is entirely justified for what you are getting. Heck, I almost want to buy one, and I don't even need a folding bike since I work from home!


Folding bike is always handy when under zombie's invasion...


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## rodar y rodar (Jul 21, 2006)

That`s odd. I wonder what the company could have seen in that video to be unhappy about. I guess that`s why I`ll never be a businessman.

Oh, even though I don`t know what was so offensive about the video, I think I know why this thread was so offensive that when I try to open it at work I get a big "Denied" on my screen and a copy of corporate electronic communications policy. Pretty sure some kind of filter doesn`t like any kind of "hard core" action


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## marks_bike (Aug 22, 2006)

Trade secretes! From what I've read old school British builders are very secretive about the way they do things. Or at least they where I dunno if there's any or much truth to that?

OPSEC!!! Loose lips sinks ships!


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## jgerhardt (Aug 31, 2009)

I bet that jig is some kind of proprietary thing they don't want getting out.


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## DWF (Jan 12, 2004)

jgerhardt said:


> I bet that jig is some kind of proprietary thing they don't want getting out.


I wouldn't think so. It's a production jig, you see things like that all over where you're doing the same thing over and over. It seems almost a lifetime ago, but I once worked at a place making hoist trolleys with capacities of 100-500 tons. Big stuff. We had fab & welding fixtures that worked similar to what you saw in the vid, except we'd be putting together hoist frames that were 30' long.


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## DWF (Jan 12, 2004)

mickuk said:


> He needs to be quick and clean - Brompton handmade over 28,000 bikes in 2010!
> 
> I'd disagree on the earlier comment about thicker materials - it is much harder to (fillet) braze thick and thin parts together (way too easy to cook the thin bits). And whilst it isn't butted 853, it is most definitely not made from thickwall steel gas pipe! The centre part in that video is made from thin folded flat sheet - get the heat wrong and that will distort all over the place.


There are no "thin" parts in that assembly relative to conventional frame building. Brazing a 2mm part to a 1.5mm part is a lot different that brazing a 1mm part to a .6mm part. None of that takes away from the guy's skill at doing what he's doing. My point being you could create a lot of problems for yourself trying to apply what you see there to conventional lightweight bicycle frame construction. A good example of that would be using no paste flux and just a gasfluxer for your brazing. On thick materials you can get away with it since you're carrying more heat and can allow impurities to float/burn off. On thinwall tubing, that kind of heat makes control very difficult and goes hand in hand with heavy distortion since you don't have the mass to draw the heat from the joint.


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## Kona420 (Oct 10, 2011)

David C said:


> Folding bike is always handy when under zombie's invasion...


LOL, why's that? ahah


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## highdelll (Oct 3, 2008)

Kona420 said:


> LOL, why's that? ahah


because they think that people riding foldies have no braaaiiinnns


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## modifier (May 11, 2007)

shiggy said:


> Here is a raw video I shot of Garro doing a HT join in under 5 minutes.
> http://mtbtires.com/site2/video/garro.mp4


I know this is a dumb question but since those tubes aren't jigged what holds them together before he gets material in the joint? Is it tack welded? If so is that a common brazing technique?


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## shiggy (Dec 19, 1998)

modifier said:


> I know this is a dumb question but since those tubes aren't jigged what holds them together before he gets material in the joint? Is it tack welded? If so is that a common brazing technique?


The frame is tack brazed in the jig then moved to the stand for brazing. It is very common to do this. tough to move around the tubes otherwise.


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## modifier (May 11, 2007)

shiggy said:


> The frame is tack brazed in the jig then moved to the stand for brazing. It is very common to do this. tough to move around the tubes otherwise.


"tack brazed" hey. I would think that the tacks would just melt as soon as you hit it with enough heat to melt the rod. Do you tack with a higher temp rod? Could you do 3 small weld tacks that would get covered up or would that contaminate the joint?


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## marks_bike (Aug 22, 2006)

modifier said:


> "tack brazed" hey. I would think that the tacks would just melt as soon as you hit it with enough heat to melt the rod. Do you tack with a higher temp rod? Could you do 3 small weld tacks that would get covered up or would that contaminate the joint?


no, not with brass, you would have to be right over the tack with the torch to get it to melt. Pretty much just don't start your finish braze over a tack weld. If the tacks are melting then you're running the torch way to hot.


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## shiggy (Dec 19, 1998)

modifier said:


> "tack brazed" hey. I would think that the tacks would just melt as soon as you hit it with enough heat to melt the rod. Do you tack with a higher temp rod? Could you do 3 small weld tacks that would get covered up or would that contaminate the joint?


Brass is much harder to remelt than to melt the rod in the first place. One of the reasons it is important to be able to lay down a continuous fillet.


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## einreb (Nov 5, 2010)

shiggy said:


> The frame is tack brazed in the jig then moved to the stand for brazing. It is very common to do this. tough to move around the tubes otherwise.


Dave Kirk did a nice little writeup here...

The Framebuilders' Collective | Kirk - Fillet Brazing

The technique that Dave demonstrates is referred to as 'tinning' ('Part 1' fourth row of photos). My understanding of the tinning process is to also get a little internal fillet.

I do the same thing (just not nearly as pretty) and I do a joint at a time and check alignment.


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## CurbDestroyer (Mar 6, 2008)

Art In The Age Presents... Fillet-Brazing with Steve Bilenky from Art In The Age on Vimeo.


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