I don’t know, the vast majority love it and then you have a couple individuals that seem to know better. I personally find it a little agricultural looking and find yours a gazillion times nicer from a product design point of view. But this is also kinda the point of custom builders, you don’t have to please everyone. In fact I’d argue you shouldn’t even try.
Other than that i also think frame material is about the least important point for a long travel mountain bike. Not that there is no difference, but one can make a good or a shitty bike out of anything.
What a timing! Through Reddit, I just learned about this community thing:
They have classes on bike repair, setting up a custom touring bike etc. but also a TIG class where one of the volunteers is a guy who works at Jaegher! It’s only a class on very basic TIG welding but I’ll see if I can get in touch with them and ask if they’re willing to help out for some volunteering or something
Thanks mate. The Orange megalomaniac has made that harder now. I’m starting to look for some ways around it all but doesn’t look good. I need to look at Europe and Asian markets to try and get into
I’ve heard of flux in the gas before: Brodie has that. But he also paints more flux on with a paintbrush. Didn’t know you could completely replace the external flux. Saves an awful lot of cleanup. And of course they don’t need to do any filing or anything because the beads are so neat.
It looks pretty much just as fast as TIG. However, those brazing rods are around 3x the price, you use more of them because of the fillet size, and there are a lot of joints on a Brompton frame. That must add up!
The quality is second to none. A consequence of the same person doing the same joint over and over again and with optimal fixturing, and perfectly cut tubes.
I work as a designer at Brompton. I’ve had the joy of getting to do a couple of days of training with the brazing team.
The secret is gas-flux and speed. Getting the filler right on the edge of the liquidus and keeping it there.
Oh and practise, the brazers here do 30 hours a week behind a torch, they don’t have to do other frame building tasks like fit up, so the actual torch time they get is waaay higher than is possible elsewhere. They’re really the top of their game.
All the joints are single-pass. No tinning the joints. All mitres are laser cut so are really reliable fits too.
Yes. Making a frame takes me at least a few weeks, often much more, but there’s only about 3h of actual welding time. But if one person makes the whole bike does it mean it has more soul?
