I’d love to get some heat sinks for HT’s and ST’s but I haven’t really seen who makes them for sale.
Suggestions?
Thanks.
Paragon Machine Works sells them as well as Sputnik and Ti Cycles. I know some enterprising machinists make their own - it’s tricky but not impossible on manual machines.
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I use a Sputnik heat sink for my BB and 44mm HT. They’re a great design.
My two seat post heat sinks are home made and based off of Paragon’s design.
They work well enough for steel but wouldn’t cut it for ti.
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I have a mix of Sputnik for ST and 44mm HT and Paragon for the BB
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Here’s the Pithy Bikes video where he made heatsinks.
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Thanks all. I have a couple BB heat sinks from Paragon, but would like to get HT and ST. Looks like Sputnik would be the best bet. I don’t have the tools or ability to make my own.
I got some tailpipe expanders from Amazon. You can get a set for about $30-$40. I haven’t used them yet so can’t verify how well they work, but I figured give them a try for that low of a price. Some people have said they used them in the past with some success. You may need to get some garter springs from McMaster to go with them. That being said, I did get a Paragon BB heatsink because the BB is critical for roundness, etc. I’m hoping the expanders will work at the HT and top of ST.
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Aren’t you a fillet brazer? You don’t want to be using heat sinks. It’s counterproductive to the process.
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TIG causes distortion and a lot of TIG builders use heat sinks to mitigate that. Fillet brazing will also heat distort tubes.
It takes longer to get tubes up to temperature for fillet brazing when using heat sinks while fillet brazing, but there are pro builders out there that use heat sinks while fillet brazing with good results.
I am a fillet brazer, but still new in the whole scheme of things. I have also started, albeit slowly, started playing with TIG as well. I feel that it’s better to have and not need rather than need and not have.
How is it counter productive to the process?
My take on heat sinks is that they are designed to help dissipate excess heat during welding, preventing some of the distortion that happens in the joining process. With TIG there is no preheat and you are instantly blasting a very localized, intense heat into the join area and heat sinks can help prevent some of the inevitable distortion. But when fillet brazing, you have to preheat the joint and a heat sink is going to make it harder to do that - requiring higher heat and/or a longer heat cycle to achieve the same thing. I was taught to preheat evenly and to get the joint accomplished in a reasonable amount of time without lingering and fiddling around - in other words, the more time you spend completing a brazed joint, the more chance for distortion and bigger heat-affected zones. In a nutshell, you need the heat from your torch to quickly heat the join area and accomplish the braze; a heat sink is an impediment to that goal, not a help. But that’s just, like, my opinion, man. @AJAX says there are pro builders who use heat sinks for fillet brazing and that may very well be true. Try it and let us know what you think!
A caveat: welding and brazing are both going to cause unavoidable distortion. Sticking a down tube and a top tube to the same side of a head tube and nothing on the other side is going to create a banana. How big of one is up to the builder. 
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I’ve been using these too. I haven’t figured out the best replacement for the rubber rings that can hold up to the heat. Right now I’m just using steel spring wire, that works okay.
Not sure if these actually help heat or distortion, but they seem like they would.
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