What’s the prettiest part of a bicycle?  

    I read that question on a forum one day.  There were many answers, but only one that I remember.  Someone said he thinks a 32 spoke, three cross wheel is the prettiest part of a bicycle.  I can’t argue with that at all.  Part of what I like best about bicycles in the false daintiness they wear as a disguise.  

    There were two sisters in ancient Rome named Tryphena and Tryphosa.  Their names mean something like dainty and delicate, but they are described as hard workers.  That’s how I think of bicycles: dainty and delicate, hard workers.  A 32 spoke, three cross wheel surely portrays that.  But, I think the prettiest part of a bicycle is the junction of the top tube, seat tube, and seat stays on a lugged frame.  I mean the kind where the seat stays are brazed to the side of the seat tube-top tube lug.  I like the seat stays to have caps too; instead of top eyes.  

    There’s a lot you can do there with caps.  You can make flat ones, or caps that wrap part way or all the way over the top of the top tube, or you can have the scooped caps that we make by brazing a tube scrap to the seat stay and then filing off the excess.  I think that’s my favorite.

    There are other solutions to this junction.  Fast back stays are popular and I think they go very well with fillet brazed frames, but less well with lugged frames.  Then there is the wishbone seat stay where a larger tube is brazed to the back of the seat tube and where you’d normally find a brake bridge, the real seat stays start and run down either side of the wheel to the drop outs.

    Is that all?  No.  What about the seat stays.  You can’t look at the seat stays without wondering whether bigger or smaller seat stays would look better.  Mostly, they are either 14 mm -- my favorite where appropriate, 16 mm, or the double taper where they start out wispy at the drop out, get thicker in the middle and then taper again.  I don’t understand why I don’t like these best because they are daintiest of all, but they aren’t my favorite.  Maybe it is the idea of seat stays showing off that offends my sensibilities.  I don’t know.  

    Eddy Merckx liked 16 mm seat stays with caps when he rode lugged framed bicycles and Ugo DeRosa built them that way.  I’ve wondered if Ugo influenced Eddy or Eddy influenced Ugo.  I put 16 mm seat stays on a frame I’m working on now.  They look good.  Bold in their deceptive daintiness.

    How long should the caps be?  Do you have any idea how many questions a frame builder asks himself or herself while building a frame.  I’ll say this, it’s a good idea to get the caps on the seat stays before the end of the day so you don’t wake in the middle of the night trying to decide.  You can finish them in the morning, but at least braze the cap on before knocking off for the day.  What ever you do, don’t slot the stays and then decide it’s 5:00 and time to quit.  Either quit early or work late, but get those caps on.

    Making caps is fun too.  Maybe that’s why I think they are so pretty.  Once you cut the stays, file them for the caps, braze the tube scraps or piece of flat stock on, you start removing the part that isn’t going to stay.  I start by trimming off what I can with a hack saw -- I love the name of that tool, hack saw.  Then I take a big file to it, and go down to finer files and finally, strips of emory cloth.  The cap emerges slowly but surely and it’s always a bit of a surprise because anything hand made comes out on its own to one extent or another.  

    When they’re all done, you file a place for them into the sides of the top tube seat tube lug so that you get more surface area to braze.  Then tip the frame up on its side in the Park stand and braze the top of the seat stay to the seat tube-top tube lug.  I put some heat on one side and the other until the flux gets good and wet, then I melt a little silver into the fillet on one side of the seat stay and flip the torch back and forth heating both sides until I see silver appear on the other side.  That way I know I’ve drawn silver all the way under the seat stay and through the joint.  When that silver first appears on the other side, just as it does on the other side of a lug when you draw silver through and across the cope, it appears as a fine, light line on the other side.  It is very pretty, but very discreet.  If I showed it to you, you might not see what I’m so excited about, but in a little while, before two lugs are done, probably, you’d see it and get excited too.

    Once the silver comes through the other side, you add a little more and drag a tiny fillet all around the joint drawing the silver with heat.  If you get a run here, it’s a mess because everything is too tight to get in and clean it up later so you have to be careful, but it’s not too hard if you are.      

    When it’s all done and painted, there you have it and it is pretty.   And do you know what?  That’s a very strong part of a bicycle frame -- two big tubes and two little tubes all brazed together.  When you put a wheel in the rear drop outs, you have four triangles each with one corner meeting at that joint.  Wow.  Who would have thought to design a bicycle like that?  That’s part of the secret.  No one did, they just evolved to that and I think that’s a good place for them to stay.  Get it?  Stay.