Crazy weather here. We're one day out of summer and it's f'ing freezing in the Central Highlands. We've been fogbound and rainy for two days and nights and it struggled to crack double digits here until the afternoon. Last winter, I spent what could have been valuable bike building time making a wood stove for the shed. I don't regret it now.



I had an unexpected day off work, so I managed to get the chainstays on. Before getting to this point, there was fair bit of tweaking the exact shape of the oval end, and grinding the sockets to fit, but the photos only show the chainstays in the bottom bracket and the whole thing fitted up in the jig.



You can never have too much flux. The stuff's not exactly cheap, but I'd rather plaster it on than deal with the horrible burned on crap that you get if you use too little. If you use plenty, and don't burn it by keeping the torch in the one spot for too long, it all scrubs off in hot water, leaving clean shiny metal underneath. I'm happy to pay $15 a jar for that.



Checking the dropout spacing post-braze. Gotta be happy with that. It'll be interesting to see how much the paint adds to the thickness, but for now things are bang on.



And after a little clean-up, the oval chainstays are in. The photos are getting crappy, as I was shooting without a flash and my main work light blew on the weekend.



Only seatstays and little details to go.



I'm building this frame using Columbus Zona tubing. Zona is sort of the mid-range tubeset that Columbus offer, but I reckon it's one of their best. They offer the top and down tubes in two different weights/thicknesses, the seat tube takes a 27.2mm post, and they do a good range of dimensions in all of the other tubes as well. The stuff is easy to work with and impressively close to specification. One of these days I'll make something using their high-end tubes like Spirit or Life, but for the moment, Zona is really hard to beat.