As mentioned earlier, we took a tour of Don Walker's bicycle shop on Friday. Photo one is the mainframe of bike in the jig after fillet brazing. Notice the streamline tubing for the down tube.
Photo two shows Surly next to the mill with the tube coping jig mounted up.
Photo three shows the man himself with a jig for building the chainstays.
In addition to building fillet brazed frames, he also builds lugged steel and he just acquired a TIG welder for titanium or aluminum frames.
It's interesting the carry over from one form of transportation to the other. Here's a guy brazing bicycle frames together, the Rickman brothers used to make some beautiful motorcycle frames the same way, a buddy of mine has a Formula Ford made the same way, and the grandson's midget is being made the same way. If you have a gas torch and some skill, you can build just about anything with wheels on it. Of course, for a long time that's just exactly what every one did. The early aircraft, hot rods, and Homer Hickham's rockets in October Sky were a result of gas welding. So even if you couldn't give a hoot about a bicycle, being able to recognize what you can do with welding and machining skills can give you one helluva start in the right direction if you want to be any kind of a fabricator. Young people seem to have a hard time picking up on this, and more so now than when I was young. Mastering the skills is the most important thing. You can build whatever you like, just how you like, later.
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