Handbuilt asymetric seat stay bike

This bike is my first foray into frame building, it is not made out of any special material nor does it use nice lugs or dropouts, in fact I was so sure it wouldn’t turn out I didn’t even order dropouts I just fabricated them out of some scrap pieces of steel once I got that far in the process.

But the process is the interesting part anyways. When I decided I wanted to build a frame I knew I would build a track bike with really tight clearances since I had been drooling over them online for a long time but I lacked the cash to procure one for myself, so I decided to build one.

The front triangle is pretty standard track geometry and since I didn’t trust my brazing skills totally I decided to buy a fork. So I bought a NOS Tange 650c fork and slightly modified it so 700c tires would fit. This gave me the really tight front end and twitchy handling that I wanted. Once I got to the rear triangle the process seemed to be going well so I fabricated some dropouts out of flat steel stock. I didn’t make them as long as I could have so I have to be a bit careful with my gear selection but they work fine since I don’t switch gears at the track often anyways.

Since the stays are what set this bike apart from everything else I will go into a bit more detail about those. I had seen a few Yamaguchi funny bike frames online and I got the idea from those, although I never did see the actual Yamaguchi asymmetric stay bike. I started by doing the left stay just like a normal stay, filing the tube until it fit around the seat tube and then brazing it on with brass. Then I cut the right stay about 2?? shorter and did the same thing. The brake bridge was the hardest part since there are compound angles on both ends, it took lots of filing and test fitting to get it to look just right.

Overall I am really happy with the way the bike turned out and although I could probably do a much better job now I really have no motivation to replace it. So I suppose I must have done something right since I usually go through bike frames fairly quickly.

I suppose I should say something about the parts spec., the parts on the bike are nothing special and represent what I was able to get good deals on throughout the years.