Don’t look too closely
I brazed up the stays for the new rack for the midlifecrisismobile today, but I was in a bit of a hurry, so, alas, I didn’t get the brass to flow properly into half of the joint between the eyelet and the tubing. One of the stays actually has a void on one side of the tube, and the other one has a gappy area in the middle of one side where the brass didn’t completely fill between the mortise and tenon.
Oh well, I’ll just clean the joint and flow in some more brass tomorrow when I braze together the fork crown mount stays for Russell’s Kogswell. I also want to make up the stays for the rack on the Murray Baja Experience but I think I’ve pretty much run out of tubing and will need to get some more before I can make up the stays on that bicycle (either that or buy a new fork with mid-fork mount points, but that falls into the category of “making changes to the Murray Baja frame set” which I don’t want to do. (And I need to make up a smaller rack for Silas’s Shiromoto but, alas, that’s in the category of “not enough tubing right now”)
And I’ll bet I run out of oxygen before I get these stays finished and brazed onto their platforms, too. I’ll have to stop by the hardware store and stock up on some more hideously expensive tiny oxygen bottles. Ugh. I wish I’d gone out and bought a proper torch + tanks when I had the money :-(
At least the porteur bags I need to sew up for these puppies only need a stock of waterproof fabric, and I can run up to Rose City Fabrics and get that without having do resort to mail-order.