Fillet brazed road frame with crowned fork for bay area rider

This frame and fork pretty much occupied my week in its entirety. Constructing the frame did not take long but the fillet finishing was pretty much a whole day's work. I think I took it to the level where it should look very nice after paint.

This frame is a copy of a Saturn frame made by the late John Padgett about 30 years ago. I think that the Saturns were some of the nicest fillet brazed frames of the last century, particularly the tandems. I hope that this one looks as nice when it is all painted and assembled as the original bike. The only departure from the Saturn is that this bike has a 1-1/8" steerer - a small concession to modernity-essentially making it easier to source the headset and stem. It will also stiffen up the front end a taste.

The customer even supplied NOS Shimano SF-22 dropouts- the dropouts of choice back in the '80's. They were tidy looking and durable. The only issue I had was that the angle between the seat and chain stays didn't work with this tall of a frame so I had to do some bronze filling to make the seatstay intersection look a bit nicer. It was a fun project but very labor intensive- the more I looked at it , the more finishing I wanted to do. Today I was able to look it over and say to myself : "pretty good for not having done one in about 15 years plus !"