You might wonder what went wrong with the first frame. Well I was on a roll and everything was going very well. I was working eight to nine hours a day on the frame for about five or six days straight. I'd brazed the dropouts into the Sachs/Columbus chainstays and I was all ready to braze them in place. I'd already brazed together the front triangle, it came out straight and the fillets looked decent so I was feeling confident and was pretty sure I didn't need any tips on how to braze the chain stays in so I went for it. For some reason I had decided to use brass instead of silver and I hadn't done much lug style brazing with brass. Penetration was poor so I tried to heat it all up again to get some brass to flow. That didn't work. So the next day Michael Catano and I tried to up the sockets to remove the stays. That only resulted in ripping the sockets and stays apart. At that point my only option with that frame would have been to cut off the sockets, braze a plate over the holes and fillet braze new stays to that... Not feeling up to the challenge of making a really janky fix I decided to just start over. Glad I did. The new frame went well, I took my time and it came out pretty well for my first frame out of class. So I built it up.
The racks were built in the french style as well. I aimed for them to be simple and functional. That to me usually adds up to beautiful. I made a point of making the front racks two instead of one if for whatever reason I need to remove one. As lone standing forms the seem a little awkward, but once on the bike they look quite good.
