# Frame#1 the "North Fargo"



## G-reg (Jan 12, 2004)

Ok, between this forum and others I've been inspired to step up Maslow's Hierarchy of "CycleNerd-ery" and build a frame. So heres some rambling and a smattering of photos. Disclaimer up front, against common sense I did not buy straight gauge tubes and stamped steel dropouts. So prepare yourself for thinking "this guy's a moron."

A Salsa Fargo has been at the top of the new bike list for me, but I really wanted something with adjustable dropouts.......and Lugs:eekster: I happen to live in Fargo ND, the northern part actually, so the ever important step of naming the bike was a no-brainer. Here's the raw materials that went into the "North Fargo:"

Nova 29er tubset I ordered a different seat tube and seatstays for tire clearance and lug compatability.

Also from Nova Were Llewelyn's double OS Stainless Lugs. 
Why, you ask? For a couple of reasons: 
1) Polished Stainless Lugs look cool. 
2) I thought I could mitigate some risk to my life buy not building a fork and using lugs on the headtube. 
3) I planned on using a seat tube sleeve anyway and this lugset also took care of that. 
4) The top head tube lug is really tall so you can cut to desired length, By not cutting it I get a taller HT so I can run drop bars without the top tube being even higher than it is already and avoid excess spacers or a goofy stem.
5) Bottom HT lug has tapped mounts for down tube cable routing/barend-road bike compatability.
6) They look cool.

They are intended for a horizontal top tube 73/73degree road bike...It's fair to say I was pushing my luck with a 74/71degree front triangle with as much TT drop as I could get away with. If Dazza doesn't black list me for hacking his lugs this time around I'll get the sloping top tube version directly from him for version 2.



For the dropouts I thought I'd try Paragon's new Rockers I like chainstay mounted discs, and dislike the aesthetics of Paragon's sliders. So though it wasn't smart to add even more stainless to a first frame these were too cool to not use. I also used their 73mm BB shell.



One of my biggest investments was BikeCad, reason being I needed a crutch to help iron out the details. I'm pretty sure I would have botched things like CS/Crank/Tire clearances without. Additionally it allowed me to nat's ass all the angles/tubing lengths and print out mitre templates. And being really anal with the lengths and mitres allowed a Jig-less frame to come out pretty straight.



I spent quite a bit of time getting the exact dimensions of everything into BikeCad. The mitre program takes into account angles/wall thickness/diameter, good measurements in made the mitre templates super accurate. Make sure you turn off any scaling in your printer settings....that makes the mitre templates super inaccurate :madman:



After "massaging" the lugs to the geometry I wanted (and subsequently altering the some measurements out of compromise with the reality of how much I could modify the lugs) they got a rough pre polish. Man I beat on these things, I'll be much nicer to the outside next time or not plan on polishing stainless and use mild steel. I ran into a random-family-ignoring-hobby-suplychain problem: not nearly enough homebrew for polishing out cast stainless steel.



First thing to see fire was the BB seat tube. It was tacked "pateric" style, using a weight in the BB and a magnet to hold it in place. Once tacked I checked that things were still square and flush with the mitres, then it was tinned all around. Just tinned at this point because the Down tube is mitred to the seat tube and the Chainstays would be in close proximity also.



Good photo....poor technique



Would you believe Harbor Freight magnets don't stand up to brass brazing heat?


The Once the BB/ST was done the rest of the Front triangle was assembled, you can see the miter templates here as things were being fine tuned.



The sequence was: Seat Lug tacked to Seat tube, Top Tube tacked to Head tube lug, Head Tube/Bottom Lug/Down tube all tacked. Those sub assemblies were double checked for squareness and then tacked together. Saving the Brass tack at the BB/Down tube for last messing with the heat in the lugs to keep that joint tight.



I don't have pics but I made up a jig for the rear drops/chainstays, clean miters weren't going to be enough to locate the rear end where it needed to be. (*edit* found a pic and took one of the jig a few posts down)


I'm going to leave it raw for a while so I can see what's about to blow apart, but couldn't help but put a bit of polish on the lugs.











It's first real test ride was my first ride at Cuyuna in Minnesota (BTW some of the best trails I've ridden ever, and I've been around). I was really tentative at first but after a few minutes the bike completely disappeared below me. I'm not going to lie, it was a good feeling riding awesome new trails on a my first frame. There's some steep stuff there and the gearing was 36x16...on a 29er. So it saw lots of torque and didn't fold like a lawn chair. I'm still trying to be subjective but am really happy with how it rides, hopefully it stays together for a while.





Thanks for all the motivation to jump into the deep end folks!


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## whydomylegshurt? (Jul 28, 2004)

That frame looks great and I like the fact that you used lugs for it. 

I noticed you mentioned using brass, did you use brass to braze the stainless parts or did you use silver for those?


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## G-reg (Jan 12, 2004)

BB is brass brazed, silver everywhere else


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## madnessmoose (Aug 22, 2007)

Awesome! Looks great! I actually really dig the raw look. Have you thought of just getting a clear coat?

What did you use for a frame jig? I wouldn't mind seeing the jig for the chain and seat stays. Look forward to more pics.

Thanks


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## jgerhardt (Aug 31, 2009)

Nice looking build!
I am have been really thinking about building an off road frame with that very same lug set...

A question about your rear dropouts, did you use silver for those as well?
That could be about $10 bucks right there filling those suckers in!

Anyhow, great looking frame, CONGRATS!


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## G-reg (Jan 12, 2004)

The drops are stainless (rocker portion is Al) so they are silver brazed. And yes there's lots of silver there. Between practicing, the actual frame, and what ended up on the garage floor I melted a bit more than a 1/4lb of 56%. I'm pretty happy with how my drop out brazing went, less satisfied with my work on the lugs, and watching the silver fillet at the steatstay / st lug carefully. 

As for the "jig," we'll use the term loosely. I picked up some scrap Al, kinda lucked out on this stuff. I don't know what exactly it came from but is nearly 1/4" thick and the 90deg edges are machined so they are really square. I brass brazed a small piece of angle iron to a axle to make a dummy. And then careful to keep things square and at the proper height used C clamps to hold everything in it's place. I set the frame on the Jig so the head tube angle was proper and based on the BB shell set the chainstay length and BB drop. Pretty crude but thanks to how nice and square the Al was as long as I didn't let the clamp shift things as it was tightened down everything stayed really square. I just used this to tack the stays to the drops and BB, and once alignment was checked finished it off the Jig.

Additionally, sorry for the cell phone pics and rambling/poor grammar. The Wife is a bit protective of the nice camera and my 2yo Son thinks it's fair game to pummel Dad when he's typing :thumbsup:


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## Drew Diller (Jan 4, 2010)

Cripes man, you ran single speed at Cuyuna? You're tougher than I am.

Nice work!


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## justridin (Nov 14, 2010)

nice job


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## DWF (Jan 12, 2004)

You did good. Install a seat stay bridge and some cable guides and it'll be good to go.


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## G-reg (Jan 12, 2004)

Thanks all, cable guides are on and seatstay brace soon.


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## Peter E (Feb 16, 2004)

nice work, makes me want to build something similar


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## ~martini~ (Dec 20, 2003)

Drew Diller said:


> Cripes man, you ran single speed at Cuyuna? You're tougher than I am.
> 
> Nice work!


Agreed. Fantastic build. Love the use of lugs.

And btw, SS at Cuyuna is easy peasy. I can't think of one hard climb up there. They did a *great* job of making it all ridable.


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## marks_bike (Aug 22, 2006)

Nice job!

Get different brass rod, those flux coated rods are a mofo to clean up.


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## G-reg (Jan 12, 2004)

Driving there right now!


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## StanleyJ (Dec 11, 2010)

Epic build, me so jealous! :thumbsup:



G-reg said:


> I spent quite a bit of time getting the exact dimensions of everything into BikeCad.


Here's my request for a favour... any chance of a screencap of BikeCAD for the rear Paragon rocker dropout dimensions... pretty please with a cherry on top?


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## mickuk (Jul 6, 2007)

There is something very special about that first ride on raw frame #1.....

Lugged frames with sloping top tubes give a real nice look - good job.

How did you find the ready fluxed brass rod? I have no chance of using gasflux (gas bottles belong to work) so was considering trying some pre-fluxed for extra practice work. I've had reasonable results with paste but would like to try filleting a bit more continuously (not braze - dip in flux - braze - dip in flux - braze - dip - repeat)


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## davesauvageau (Jan 8, 2010)

Hey man, I live in West Fargo. I am an art student at NDSU. I have done some sculpture with brazed steel rods. I would like some hands on help if you would be willing to hang out sometime. I want to do some brazing on a couple Surly frames I have. I also work at Scheels in the bike shop on 45th. If you want to go riding sometime or talk about metal working, just PM me and I can send you my phone number or something. Great work on the frame btw. I love the Fargo. I have a Pugs and a Karate Monkey and the Fargo is a perfect in between for those two bikes.


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## Drew Diller (Jan 4, 2010)

mickuk said:


> There is something very special about that first ride on raw frame #1.....


I remember that. Such a bad **** eating grin that my cheeks were sore later. The second most ridiculous bike feeling I got was hooning an E-bike with studded tires on a mirror smooth frozen pond.


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## G-reg (Jan 12, 2004)

Drew D, ~martini~ ,
Cuyuna is really SS friendly, don't know if I'd call it "easy peasy" but I wouldn't be faster with gears. There would be less grunting if I had some more 29er appropriate cog/chainrings lying around(using a 36x16). Again, it's confidence building to really put the screws to it with a tall gear/wide handlebars/lots of grip. The rear end turned out pretty stiff. My personal reference for stiffness is riding Klein Attitudes as my XC/Fixi MTBs for the past 15years. Which leads me to my next question: 

How important are CS / SS braces? Are they for stiffness or more to take some stress off the joints of the SS/ST, CS/BB. 


marks_bike, mickuk
Truer words have never been spoken. I have yet to come by a substance I loathe more than that F'n Flux. It's some kind of physics bending hatefull hard as diamonds goo. And from what I can tell the hot water soak does nothing to loosen it up. Using Flux/Brazing rod from a framebuilding type instead of the local welding store is on the list of things to do differently for frame #2

Dave, 
We've met before. Using the term "Employee" loosely, I occasionally work across the street at Paramount. PM sent.

Stanly
Here you go. Set up at the shortest position and an angle that seemed to make sense. To be honest I just looked at recent Cocino/Engin builds to see how they had them angled and tried to copy. You need a bit of tilt to help with clearance for the brake caliper, especially if going with a cable Avid. I actually zoomed to 1:1 scale on my monitor (is actually a 42in TV and why there are pics of a couch earlier) and held up the part to make sure the measurements were being applied properly.


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## StanleyJ (Dec 11, 2010)

G-reg said:


> Stanly
> Here you go. Set up at the shortest position and an angle that seemed to make sense. To be honest I just looked at recent Cocino/Engin builds to see how they had them angled and tried to copy. You need a bit of tilt to help with clearance for the brake caliper, especially if going with a cable Avid. I actually zoomed to 1:1 scale on my monitor (is actually a 42in TV and why there are pics of a couch earlier) and held up the part to make sure the measurements were being applied properly.


You're a super-star! Thanks G-reg. :thumbsup:


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## G-reg (Jan 12, 2004)

I was going to get the "North Fargo" built back up for a 100mi gravel race this weekend. But found a crack in the seat tube / bb weld. This was going to be it's last ride before being sacrificed anyway, but it would have been nice to get a last ride in.

I cut the seat tube at the mid point, and not too surprisingly "sproing" I had built a bit of tension into the front triangle.









This is after a few minutes of destructive inspection. The crack I saw was a hairline in the upper portion of the fillet braze. After yanking on the now cut seat tube for a while the crack propagated pretty easily. There was some screwdriver stab/pry going on at the back, that's why it's so blown out
. 









Think I overheated things a bit? It was surprising how brittle the metal had become. 









I also cut the dropouts out, I'll use them again as I really like them and they are expensive! The picture doesn't really show it too well, I managed to get plenty of silver down the stays. But it was porous and inconsistant in places.










With the drops cut out I went Hulk on a seat stay and a chain stay. Like the seat tube they gave up just past the fillet. Again, I've got some heat control to work on.










My money was on one of these silver fillets for the seat stays being the first to give up.










Oh well, on to #4.....


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## GrayJay (May 16, 2011)

Thanks for posting the postmortem, informative. 
Maybe you can put all the cut-up pieces into a 1400° hearth and render all the silver out, produce a nice ingot.


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## adarn (Aug 11, 2009)

Very interesting. I'm about in the same spot as you as far as number of frames. I think I should probably cut one up soon to see how things are going anyway.


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## njeslinger (Sep 26, 2012)

Dont lokk to bad for your first bike


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