A Day of Stays

Sorry for my silence lately!  

Today I spent a good chunk of time in the shop working on the chain stays and the seat stays for the touring frame.  

When I was working on stays at the Yamaguchi Frame Building School Mr. Yamaguchi had a few nifty tricks to deal with stays.  However, this current bike is a bit tricky and is using bent chain stays, so I had to do a bit of magic to get things to work.  And by magic I mean math: I calculated the angle of the chain stays and then mitered them accordingly, making sure that I kept the amount of material removed consistent on both sides.

We have a stay!

Once the stays were mitered, I had to slot the other ends to fit the dropouts, which took approximately forever.  The only file I had to do this was a low quality file that I hadn't yet replaced with a Nicholson file...and I definitely learned my lesson!  

Now it's really starting to look like a bike!

I still need to crimp the drive side chain stay, thought I did mark and measure with the crank that will go on this bike so that I have a good point of reference.  
The seat stays are about halfway done, but I need a better file before I attempt to slot them.  Once they're good to go the rear triangle will be tacked, which means final brazing and the (many) braze-ons are coming soon...