It’s always interesting to work on frames that come through the workshop. This older steel frame came in… to have “S and S” travel couplers fitted….
The BB shell must be ‘square’ for it to sit straight in the frame jig and after a quick check with the facing-cutter tool it was clear that the BB shell had never been faced … not good because the old-style BB cups would have worn out much earlier than they should have.
I’ve also seen mid to high-end production frames that lacked this attention to detail as well. It’s pretty important now with modern external crank bearings too. Check the pic …. part-way through ‘facing’ and some paint is yet to be removed near the chainstay while metal has been removed at the front.
This frame had a couple of dents as well as a repaired dent that had been filled in with brass and it was still holding up very nicely. It also had the stays skewed with the rear-wheel dropouts 8mm off to one side which I corrected.
It’s the sum of the little things I do during construction of my frames as well as the beautiful frame tubing that I choose that keeps me in love with custom-made steel frames. Today’s thin-wall frame tubing is a step ahead of the tubing used in older lugged steel frames from the past with reduced weight (thinner walls and larger diameter), increased springy’ness (thinner walls) and increased rigidity if designed-in by selection of the appropriate tube (less constrained by lug diameters than in the past).
