#bilaminate

Beyond Lugs, beyond fillet brazing, there lies Bilaminate freedom

The photo is not that sharp, it’s hand held.

The details on this, however, are very sharp.

Hand built bilaminate seattube cluster.

Can you tell this isn’t a lug? Exactly.

Bilaminates are far and away my most favoured technique.

The combination of Lugs and fillet brazing, gives a lot of freedom

The smooth transitions of fillets meet the well defined edges of lugs giving you the best of both…

Bilaminate headtubes are beautiful.

But that beauty is more than simply looking good when painted, or the rarity value, or a show of how good a framebuilder is, there is that, of course.

Bilaminates are beautiful because they acomplish a purpose.

Tricky to make, tricky to braze and tricky to file.

Bilamination doubles the thickness of the toptube and downtube joint. This increases strength, adds…

Craig was having some trouble with front brake cable routing on his Hot Tubes rando bike- the steerer was cut short and the hanger for the front cantilever was forcing the housing into a tight bend.  We brainstormed a bit and came up with a kinda cool solution- as Craig needed a different stem anyway, we designed a new handbuilt stem with an internal cable hanger.  

Built with 4130 and utilizing a bilaminate bronze fillet / silver brazed construction and spec'd with a 31.8 bar clamp for Craig's existing components, I fashioned this stem to match the rugged-but-elegant aesthetic of the Hot Tubes build.  The cable housing for the front brake comes off the back of the bar and enters the stem via a linear-pull noodle-style ferrule.  Inside the stem extension, lined steel tubing routes the cable out through a reinforced hole under the stem, exactly in line with the Paul cantilever cable hanger for a cable line that runs parallel to the head tube.

Eschewing paint, we went with a gun-blued raw steel finish and a hand-rubbed linseed oil sealer.  I threw in titanium fasteners, just for fun.