Re: [Frame] Can an inexperienced user remove a front derailleur braze on?

[Brian Smith]

How about using a file?  A good mechanic should be good enough with a file and some 80-grit paper to do this well with little risk of damage.

-Brian

On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 7:48 PM, Bubba <tape...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi.  First post.  I'm a lurker of this group.  I'm a reasonably accomplished mechanic, but I have essentially zero framebuilding skills.  My question for the group is a pretty simple one.  

I have a bare unpainted frameset.  It was built up as a commuter for a while and I want to rebuild it as a road bike for my son.  It has a front derailleur braze on tab, but with the smaller chainrings I'll be using for the build, that tab is in the wrong place.  I'd like to sweat it off and just use a clamp on front derailleur.  Is that something I can do with my own hardware store torch before I go to the powdercoater?  Or is it something I should just pay somebody to do for me?  I imagine getting too much heat to the other joints is the thing to be afraid of.  The BB is lugged, and the color of the brazing material looks like brass to me.  The seat cluster is fillet brazed.  

Thanks for any advice.

Bubba

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[Ethan Labowitz]

It doesn't necessarily need to be done hot. You could always cut/file/grind it off, being careful enough so you don't remove any of the tube itself, just the brazing filler and the braze-on.

The bigger question is, who made the frame? If it's a local enough builder, just get them to do it.

Ethan Labowitz

Somerville, MA

[Owen Lloyd]

  With no prior brazing experience I would recommend cutting/filing it off.  If it is brass it could be too easy to overheat and tear the tube accidentally.  Also every heat cycle will weaken the tube.
  When I have removed items like this in the past I have used a hacksaw to remove as much as I can, then used a good aggressive file to remove the rest close to the tube, then a finer file to get the last little bit off, finishing it off with 80 grit emery cloth.
  Boom done.

Owen
Chicago

[Mark Bulgier]

I’d saw/file it off too myself.

 

Only thing I have to add is that you don’t have to file or sand every bit of filler off.  Once you’ve filed the remains of the braze-on off and all you see is silver, I’d stop there.  It won’t show once painted, and that way minimizes the chance of taking off any steel from the tube.  Minimize your sanding too, just take the file marks out.  With a good clean 2^nd-cut file and proper technique, the file marks should be so little that sanding might not even be needed.

 

Card the file if it gets a chip of metal stuck in it, or that can cause deep gouges. Stop instantly if you see that happening or suspect it.  A good filer can tell by feel whether the file is clean or needs carding.

 

Mark Bulgier

Seattle

[Bubba]

Brilliant.  Thanks.  Hacksaw and smart filing it will be.  Thank you to all four of you. 

Ethan, it's a ~25 year old frameset.  Remember the minor mountain bike pioneer Josh Deetz?  One of his many sidelines was as a small volume importer.  While working together briefly at a shop he had this small stockpile of frames.  He said they were Harals, which I think was a Swiss label.  It's Italian threaded, and has a curved top tube and seat tube and Josh said it was XL (Excel?) tubing.  I saw an 1990s era Mikkelsen which looked really similar.  Anyway, I bought it for $100 and built it as a college commuter for my girlfriend.  Now we've been married 16 years.  The frame, which has never been painted, has spent the last decade stripped down, and my 12 year old son is getting close to where he'll fit it. 

[James Nachlin]

Haral were framebuilders from the Haute Savoie region of France. They
made ready-to-ride as well as custom frames. A friend has one that
was custom-made for him in the 1980s, and it's distinctive for having
an extremely slack (like 70°) seat tube, and showing only about 6 cm
of seat post, like a bike from a much earlier era.