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I'm now at the point where I'm steadily working through the braze ons. This is the pile I need to attach.

I'm also spending time refining the fillet shapes, which I get more picky with every week! There were a couple of small holes caused by balls of flux getting trapped. I filled them with silver braze, and filed back. They disappear completely.

The thing I was oddly nervous of was drilling and fitting the water bottle bosses, as you're punching hole into to your lovely frame, and if you get them in the wrong place that would be a Bad Thing. Went fine, after checking the measurements at least a half-dozen times.

The nice thing about doing your own frame is you can add handy bits, like a chain hitch. Voila!

All that's left is the STI and brake bosses, head tube reinforcement rings and the gear cable guides. Then head badge, cut the seat tube slot, chase and face, polish.

Very interested to see how you get on. I'm doing some frame building one day a week at the moment, and I've been lucky enough to have access to a Sputnik jig.

If you fancy a chat about some of the principles they are using then drop me a line.

Love this. Who did the paint for you?

It was good, and the ride out from Tonbridge is lovely, pretty much all along NCR12.

I should have hustled for a spot nearer the front, got held up quite a bit on the first lap, but eventually settled into a good tussle with 3 other guys. I can see how you could crash in a straight line there, the ground conditions were pretty sketchy.

The cost of making a mistake on those descents was pretty high, as they were lined with brambles. Fortunately only my bar tape and right calf got bitten by them. I think I'd ride it again, but only if I knew there'd been a good dry spell before hand. It'd be rank in the wet.

I can't quite work out what's going on at PORC. Is it part built, part abandoned or what? The main building looked good from the outside, but it was just a shell.

There was a very treacherous bit of road on the way, watched some poor guy bin his carbon De Rosa on a corner by Penshurst Place. He was OK, but the RH shifter, tape, bar and rear mech were all looking a bit shabby :(

Nice work! How did you remove the old head tube? Did you do it mechanically or did you have to apply heat to get it separated from the remainder of the lugs?

Friday was pretty hectic in the workshop, helping the guys prepare for the Spin London Xmas bash.

However, I did manage to complete the final bits of bronze brazing. I've now got the chain stay bridge in and tidied up, and the seat post clamp attached.

Brake bridge tidied up. The shape I went for mean the mitres help to hold them in place under load, so there's not much need to lay a fillet, but I like the flowing look.

The chain stay bridge is simply a piece of tubing with a water bottle boss brazed onto it. I've positioned it so that I should get a nice radius on the mudguards, closely tracking the tyre.

Seat post clamp. There's quite a mass of metal here, so you want to get the clamp nice and heated and not spend much time with the torch on the tube. You're trying to use the heat to pull the braze into the space between the surfaces, and then fillet the edges so you can sand back for a nice transition.

Next week I should be able to add the bottle bosses, braze-ons and fill any minor imperfections. That'll be done with silver rod, as it flows better than bronze and needs a lower temperature. Ideal for thinner sections of the centre of tubes, and for components without so much structural loading.

Then, with any luck it'll be the head badge, head tube, seat tube and BB prep and a final check and polish.

That'll be low pressures and disconnect the front brake, by the looks of it!

Ouch. Fingers crossed that we don't get rain in the next few days then.

Heh. The photographer shouted "Show off!" at me, the cheeky sod :-)

Cheers Andy. I've done some MTB and snowboarding in the past, so I'm OK with a bit of air. I did hit that bump faster than planned, race adrenaline I guess!

I'm heading down to ride at PORC on Sunday, first visit for me. What are the facilities and the course like?

First lap over-enthusiasm from me, right there!

Wow congrats Mike, what an amazing motivation to carry on with all of this.
Really interesting to see how you test the bridge position with a caliper first before going belt and braces, never really thought about that before.

No doubt if you were building lots of the same model you'd just jig that kind of operation and punch out a load of bridges at the right size, but obviously this is a bit more hands-on!

Tacking is really useful throughout the build process, especially with the fillet brazes. You can stitch the front triangle and chain stays together with minimal heating, check them all for alignment and redo anything that's out without too much bother.

The same approach could be taken with lugs, I suspect. Just put a tiny dab on the tip of the lug, check, then pull it in/flat when you fix the joint fully. Heating while pulling should let you dismantle it if you need to.

Pretty sure they winch the Hoggenburg higher on each lap.

That crash looked really nasty, caught the barrier and high-sided. Oooof.

25th for me, which I'm super-pleased with. It was getting harder and harder as the course cut up, so the senior race must've been really difficult.

The consistency of the mud was just right to fill my tyres so it got quite slippery. Running Racing Ralph/Rocket Ron clinchers.

It was proper hard work today, the long, flat, sticky bottom section of the lap was draining.

Managed not to crash, and had some good tussles with a few riders. I was a bit more positive with my start this time too. Be interested to see where I ended up, I felt like I went a little bit better than last week.

I rode back to the station with the bike, having changed out of my race kit. There were a few people doing a double-take as I rolled it around, as I looked pretty clean, but the bike was filthy.

A little update from Friday. I spent the morning refining some of the fillets across the bike to get them more trim. Still need more work, but they are getting nicer every time I go over them.

Mostly this week was about cutting and fitting the brake bridge. The mitres need to place it so that the caliper bolt runs tangential to the wheel, and with the bolt dead centre between the stays. It's a process of file, check, file, check...

After offering up the brake then I held the bridge in place with a single tack. For tacking you want to keep the heat restricted to as small an area as possible to get a little dab of braze, rather than a big joint. In the event there's something wrong that minimises the amount of work needed to take the part out. You can see the relatively small area where the flux has come up to temperature in this pic, where it's gone glassy is the area that's been heated.

Then a quick fit-up with the brake and tire. I'm going to be using a 25mm, and these are medium-drop Tektro calipers. Although I'm not dead in the middle of the adjustment, there should be ample clearance.

Once I was satisfied the setup was OK I brazed it in. Next week I'll clean it up. One thing I was really surprised about was how much the bridge stiffens the rear end up. Probably wouldn't have noticed but I forgot to put the dummy axle in, and making the slight correction to the spacing took a surprising amount of effort!

This was done with a smaller diameter brazing rod, a 1.5mm. That way you get an appropriate amount of braze on there.

I also have some very exciting news. I applied to exhibit at Bespoked next year as a new builder. It felt like a bit of a long-shot, but having submitted images of my progress I've been given a spot!

Bit scary. In a good way.

I have a mate who did the full route and he said similar. It costs naff all and you get all sorts of stuff in the registration.

I've been talked into doing the full route, every time I think about it I feel a bit sick... so, so, so many miles

Find a strong wheel. Sit behind it :)

Did the 160km LBL last year, and it was excellent. The route, fellow riders and organisation were all top-notch.

Yeah, that's definitely an option. I've looked at the dirt pattern on the underside of my mudguard-equipped Cross Check and based the design on that.

I'll have a think!

So far it's been a very rewarding experience. There's nothing quite like designing and crafting something with your own hands.

Nice that people are enjoying some of the technical side of it too. I'm obviously just starting out, but I really like to understand why things behave the way they do. It all helps you to anticipate what might happen when you do something. I am an absolutely avid bike geek as well, so I'm always rooting around for more info.

I've been bold enough to start thinking about design schemes. I want to keep it pretty simple, with a very practical dark colour around the fork and wheels. It's a winter bike, so there'll be plenty of muck on there at points. There'll be a logo on the fork, and a name on the down tube.

This is where my head's at. Apparently white paint leaves your fillets with nowhere to hide, so that'll be interesting.

I gave Howard a shout as I was heading back to the train station after racing in the Vets. It was a properly good course, and getting there was so easy from St Pancras.

Bent my mech hanger in a crash, but fortunately I have a spare that's now gone on ahead of next week's race out at Hog Hill. I have to learn that the transition from wet grass/mud onto fine tarmac can be very very slippery.

Second race in the London X league for me today out at the Gravesend Cyclopark.

Excellent course, friendly staff and lots of racers enjoying themselves. I've not done much racing, but CX seems an excellent way to start.

Yesterday was mostly about seat stays. I also met Jambon, who dropped into the workshop to get some work done on a frame. I share space with Saffron Frameworks & Rusby Cycles.

First up was drilling gas relief holes, temporarily creating a sad robot face on the back of the seat tube. You have to give a path for air in the tube to escape, otherwise as you heat it the only path it has is through your brazing area. Do I want a braze with holes in it, or to be sprayed in the face with molten alloy? Nope nope nope.

Both stays were then tacked in place. The heat causes movement, so the top surface tack on the top lifted the bottom of the stay away from the dropout by about 1-2 cm. Once you tack the underside and hold it in position it locks back in. Amazing how much it moves, really.

Then the brazing of the stays was done in earnest. On the dropout end they need to be flowed into the existing braze, which involves reflowing some of that joint. The seat tube end is very tricky, as the gap between the stays is tiny.

Thoroughly preheating the area and working with gravity helps the braze flow through. I did have to reflow one small area, I think a blob of flux got in the way. No biggie. Rather than use a small No.2 torch tip for that I was advised to use a No.5. The extra heat output helps to quickly bring the small area up to brazing temperature.

It's important to be as neat and even as you can manage on the seat tube cluster, as it's a very awkward area to file. I did OK, but I did have to use some small jeweller's files called Rifflers to get right around the joint. Awkward, but satisfying to get right in there.

I made the error of not putting a dummy axle in the dropouts as a brazed, which caused the drops to pull towards each other by just over a millimetre. A quite firm push corrected that, and the back end alignment all looks good now.

Next week I'll refine the fillet shapes some more, then it's onto the brake bridge, chain stay bridge, seat post binder and the braze ons.

Thanks! I'll post some more pics tomorrow. I've got the seat stays on and mostly cleaned up. It's actually starting to look like a bike frame.