Hand Carved Lugs

The build process begins with the lugs — we particularly enjoy carving lugs by hand.

Every set of lugs we carve is a unique design and is not repeated.

Fitting to the Drawing

We use the drawing as a pattern and dry fit your frame with V-blocks on the reference plate. The frame is pinned to hold it together during tacking.

After the frame has been tacked together, it is checked on the surface plate one final time before finish brazing.

Silver Brazing

The frame is finished brazed with 56% cadmium-free silver. Silver allows lower joining temperatures (reducing impact to the steel grain structure near the joint) and creates a very strong and beautiful joint.

Silver is flowed from one shoreline through the joint to the other side to ensure complete coverage.

Fluted Seat Stays

Many of our bicycles include fluted fastback seatstays.

These are, of course, custom made by hand. We start by back-cutting the seatstay and then old pieces of chainstay are cut, flipped-over and brazed onto the seatstay to make the flute. The flutes are then trimmed and the new piece is hand-mitered to the seat lug for a perfect fit.

Frame Alignment

After brazing, your frame is checked again and we perform a final alignment.

The resulting structure is an extremely strong, fundamentally straight frame with a minimum of internal stress.

Polishing Stainless

After the frame is finished, we trim off the pins and complete any polishing. Polishing is very time consuming but makes for a beautiful product.

For frames that don't have any stainless polishing we shape all the lugs to ensure a crisp and clean paint surface.