First Stem Finished!

It only took 2 years.

The impetus here was to finesse my welding abilities, learn to braze and make something useful. I think the welding is sound, I'm better now than I was two years ago. At the time, the only access I had to brazing material was pre-fluxed stick from HD and a mapp gas torch. Needless to say, the brazing is horrendous. I've since learned to use an oxy-acetylene setup. This particular stem is 1 1/8" and the dimensions match pretty darn well to the Deda Pista Newton stem that I based it off of, hence the track bars in the stem. The finishing here is terrible, I didn't want to final cut the tubes before brazing and welding for some dumb reason so I ended up cutting and slotting these with a die grinder and it shows.



Another point of vexation for me was that I'd anticipated being able to weld two steel threaded pieces I ordered from Nova Cycles to the steerer clamp tube. However, I soon discovered that there was some serious impurity in the steel and despite cleaning them thoroughly ahead of time, there was simply no way to achieve a clean weld.

Below are some photos of an orange Kelly stem and a Salsa stem that I based the construction of this stem off of. Sadly, I think my stem will be obsolete as I really favor removable face plates and when I started it, I had more than one track bike and it would have made sense to have two bikes with the Deda track drops on them. The 4th stem is a Salsa stem that I decided to repaint safety orange for no good reason.



If I were to take another swing, I'd take the time to have a jig made to hold the tubes while welding. For these, I ordered tubing that had a close inner diameter to what I needed and I incorrectly assumed that slotting them would open them up enough for a good fit. Next time, I'd ream the tubes to the exact ID before welding and slotting. I'd also fabricate the threaded pieces myself out of steel I knew to be suitable to welding.

More pics here.