Brazing materials used by Rickman to build frames

Joined
Jul 20, 2016
Messages
3
I have read that for companies like BSA and Triumph used production brazing method by pinning joints and furnace brazing. Does anyone know the type of brass and flux used by British bike builders like Rickman? I have had instances when joint repair is required on a restoration. Most recently I have a kick stand pivot on a BSA lightning to repair. It may not be necessary to use the same brazing components as they used but it would be interesting to know since their brazing produced good liking fillets.
 
It is done with SIF bronze welding rod, NOT brazing :!: :!:
It was specifically formulated for gas welding; it welds at a higher temp than brazing and a lower temp then welding


http://www.weldability-sif.com/pages/si ... istory.asp

There is a whole section of this on this website under General Classic Motorcycle Discussion and elsewhere.
whatever you do, do not use normal brazing rod :!: :shock:
 
Did Rickmans use 531 tubing ?
Or something more modern, that they tigged up.
(And then nickel plated, which makes them really hard to repair.)

Most recent common british frames are just plain steel tubing and electric welding. (japanese too)
So can be welded with common oxy or stick welding.
I welded the sidestand lug on a Commando, no problemo.

Stay away from welding near the lugs of older lugged brazed frames though,
the lugs are made of malleable iron (cast iron, before they are heat treated).
 
Rohan said:
Did Rickmans use 531 tubing ?
Or something more modern, that they tigged up.
(And then nickel plated, which makes them really hard to repair.)

All the production Rickman frames were Sifbronze welded in 531 tube. The first couple of frames the brothers made before going commercial might have been different, but I have no info on that. You can still buy the original Sifbronze no.1 rod, although there are other alternatives now that are equally suitable for bronze welding steel tube.

Ken
 
As Ken has said Rickmans used 531 tubing and the standard way of joining it was by bronze welding, also known as fillet brazing. In this process the base metal is brought to dull red and the bronze filler metal melted into to it to form a fillet around the joint. At no point should the base metal get raised to its melting temperature otherwise the bronze will boil off and make a huge mess. Since the base metal doesn’t get as hot, bronze welding is a useful repair process for use on steel in general since there will be less chance of the heat affecting surrounding items and finishes. Bronze welding of 531 is done using an oxy/acetylene torch and a gas fluxer. The gas fluxer is just a bottle with boric acid in it through which the acetylene is passed. This produces a green flame with the flux in it and hence produces a very clean joint with no flux clean up required. The rod used these days by the current practitioners of 531 frame building is SifBronze 101 which is I believe formulated to be easier to build up fillets. If you live in UK you can buy it at many welding supply places - if you live in USA you can probably find an equivalent bronze rod by comparing the maker’s chemical composition listings. It might not be quite that simple since I believe the Sif Bronze 101 had its viscosity/cooling characteristics optimized for the buildup of fillets.
I have had to have repair work done on my Seeley frame ( bronze welded 531) on a number of occasions and initially my friend, (the late Les Cook) taught himself to bronze weld and did it for me. After he passed away I found a local bicycle frame builder of custom high end steel frames here in Seattle who could bronze weld using a gas fluxer. It turns out there is still a pretty widespread cottage industry here in the US making custom steel frames using bronze welding. It might be worth checking your local bicycle scene. Another source of people familiar with bronze welding high tensile steel tube would be specialist vintage sports car restorers. I believe early space frame Lotus’s used a 531 tubing bronze welded chassis and the Jag E type ( XKE) definitely used that method of construction for the engine/front suspension hanger
Bronze welding can also be performed using a Tig torch and bronze filler rod (aka Tig Brazing) but is not recommended for 531
Re your BSA sidestand repair, and as mentioned above, if there are any other brazed lugs in the vicinity then the heat from any kind of repair process on the sidestand lug could create issues.
Bear in mind that I am just an owner of a 531 frame that had to be repaired, not an expert welder, but hopefully the above will have given some direction on where to find out more info.

Duncan
 
Re “Did Rickman’s use 531 tubing?

Probably, yes, when 531 was readily available, but Reynolds Tubes for reasons known only to themselves decided to only supply large orders of 50, 000 metres or so , then people stopped buying it. Motorcycle frame makers in the cottage industry use T45 tube for the frames now mainly.
 
SeeleyWeslake said:
Bronze welding of 531 is done using an oxy/acetylene torch and a gas fluxer. The gas fluxer is just a bottle with boric acid in it through which the acetylene is passed. This produces a green flame with the flux in it and hence produces a very clean joint with no flux clean up required.

Duncan

Lots of good info there, Duncan. Maybe one little addition about the fluxing. A gas fluxer is really a great way to do it, particularly if you are doing production work, but you can do as well with conventional powder/paste brazing flux. The only problem with it is that you have to keep applying it to the rod as you weld, and that it's a pain to clean off the flux residue afterwards. A lot of frames have been built in 531 (and other alloy) tubes without the use of a gas fluxer.

As a side note, it's not too complicated to make your own gas fluxer. Jim Schmidt (jseng1) built his own when he was making the frame for his monoshock Norton.

Ken
 
Bernhard said:
It is done with SIF bronze welding rod, NOT brazing :!: :!:
It was specifically formulated for gas welding; it welds at a higher temp than brazing and a lower temp then welding


http://www.weldability-sif.com/pages/si ... istory.asp

There is a whole section of this on this website under General Classic Motorcycle Discussion and elsewhere.
whatever you do, do not use normal brazing rod :!: :shock:

I was always teached that a joining process where the temperature of the base material is not raised above the melting point is called brazing, and NOT welding.
Or did they teach me incorrectly ? your thoughts please.
 
Peter R said:
Bernhard said:
It is done with SIF bronze welding rod, NOT brazing :!: :!:
It was specifically formulated for gas welding; it welds at a higher temp than brazing and a lower temp then welding


http://www.weldability-sif.com/pages/si ... istory.asp

There is a whole section of this on this website under General Classic Motorcycle Discussion and elsewhere.
whatever you do, do not use normal brazing rod :!: :shock:

I was always teached that a joining process where the temperature of the base material is not raised above the melting point is called brazing, and NOT welding.
Or did they teach me incorrectly ? your thoughts please.

Been a lot of discussion on that issue here. Technically, you are probably correct, according to the original definitions of welding, brazing, and soldering. But a common usage of the terms now is to call it brazing when the filler metal flows into the joint and bronze welding when the filler metal is also used to build up a fillet. All the custom frame building that we are talking about here (Rickman, Seeley, etc.) use the latter (bronze welding) technique. Still, calling anything using bronze filler brazing is also pretty common, at least in the US. Also sometimes called braze welding, but I don't see that one used much. I think the use of the term "bronze welding" came about to distinguish between the conventional "hearth" and torch brazing techniques used for earlier tube and lug frame construction, where all the strength comes from the capillary flow of bronze into the joint, and the later method where much of the strength comes from the built-up fillet of bronze between the fitted tube joints. SIF may have been the ones to pioneer this technique, or not, but their alloys were definitely the material of choice for it at the time.

Ken
 
FWIW, what we call brazing was originally referred to as "hard soldering" back in the early 1800s, to distinguish it from soft soldering, which is done with lower temperature melting point filler.

Ken
 
And yet more. This clip from Ken Sprayson's book sheds some light on the terminology from a real expert on the subject.

Please note: Prior to this section, Ken clearly states that calling it bronze "welding" is technically incorrect, because the base material is not melted, but he still uses the term because it is in common usage.

Brazing materials used by Rickman to build frames


Ken
 
And a final quote from Ken Sprayson's book that sheds some interesting light on why Norton chose "bronze welding" for their Manx frames in 531 tube instead of conventional gas or arc welding.

Brazing materials used by Rickman to build frames


Ken
 
That book quote needs some looking into - and comment.

Reynolds did all the wartime aircraft frames - its noted they welded 10,000 MILES of tubing into aircraft frames.

Is Ken Sprayson saying they weren't bronze welded ?
Thats the 1st time thats been mentioned...

AND, roadgoing Norton featherbeds were mild steel tubing - eminently suitable for electric welding.
So that bit of quote is a bit misleading.
 
Bernhard said:
Re “Did Rickman’s use 531 tubing?

Probably, yes, when 531 was readily available, but Reynolds Tubes for reasons known only to themselves decided to only supply large orders of 50, 000 metres or so , then people stopped buying it. Motorcycle frame makers in the cottage industry use T45 tube for the frames now mainly.

Reynolds on their website noted that all 531 tubing postwar was sourced from Sweden. (?)
(not sure its still there to consult)
And as a prewar tubing type, it was considered obsolete - even after the war.
 
Rohan said:
That book quote needs some looking into - and comment.

Reynolds did all the wartime aircraft frames - its noted they welded 10,000 MILES of tubing into aircraft frames.

Is Ken Sprayson saying they weren't bronze welded ?

That's exactly what he's saying. He mentioned it several times in discussing the initial development and uses of 531 tube. He didn't say if it was gas torch or electric welded. I've always assumed it was gas torch, similar to early aircraft practice in the US with 4130 tube.

The book is definitely worth reading. All sorts of first hand info in it. "Ken Sprayson The Frame Man," ISBN 978-0-9564975-6-7, published by Panther Publishing Ltd. in 2012.

Ken
 
Just looked in the book again, and Ken's first job with Reynolds was assembling Merlin engine mountings, with the tubes fitted into jigs for the "skilled aircraft welders" to finish with oxy acetylene gas fusion welding. He does mention that later work included electric arc welding.

Ken
 
Furnace brazing is nor relevant to this subject. If you walk into any small engineering shop in either Australia or probably America and ask for 'BRAZING' you will get what Rohan calls bronze welding. If you ask for 'bronze welding' they would probably think you are gay and increase the fee. The main problem with brazing the Rickman frame to fix a crack will be the nickel plating. I don't believe you can simply braze over it. You would probably need to mask off from the area around the crack and shot blast the area so you can braze it without making a mess. If you are making a brazed joint on the Rickman frame there is a difficulty getting the fillet big enough. Most of the fillet welds on push-bikes are only about 1mm in width. On a Rickman or a Seeley frame the fillets are about 8mm wide. The bronze welding rod and the flux determine that. Seeley frames were all brazed with tobin bronze. The last frame I was involved in building we used flux cored nickel bronze which gave reasonable looking joints.
 
You have this partly right and partly completely upside down and partly mixed about ?
And certainly correct about furnace brazing not being related to the discussion here.
And totally wrong about what I call bronze - and please do not fabricate/falsify my replies for me !

'Brazing' is commonly done with BRASS (copper/zinc) - it flows into small spaces and will not build into fillets.
Tobin bronze is likewise that brass stuff.

As already discussed, 531 and rickman frames were done with sifbronze, which builds into fillets,
and ain't brass.
Nickel bronze seems to be a modern substitute.

We clear ?
 
Back
Top