So, Boson found an awesome place to get the frame painted up in York, PA, which turned the job around much more quickly than i had expected. It is always amazing to me what a huge difference paint makes to a project. Now it is its own thing instead of an assembly of parts that i have been bouncing around my head for the past couple of months.

Good news, certainly, but i have somewhat of a scramble to get my ducks in a row for its final assembly. Remaining tasks: cut, drill, paint, and varnish the plywood paneling for the final cargo bay, and nickel plate the steering fittings at the front and back of the steering assembly. I will have lots of pictures of those and of the final assembly, obviously.

In the meantime, I have returned to work on Ben's stem, a simple 105 mm, 7 degree 31.8 clamp piece with 79 mm of stack built in. it is nice to work with the stem jig, which is an awesome piece of tooling. I also like stems, as they feel a lot like the practice joints of which I have done so many.

I have started in on the work of filing and polishing the stem up to make it all pretty and to check the brazes for pits or flaws. The joints are cleaning up nicely and it should look pretty good once it is all smoothed out. After things are smooth, I have to polish it all, as I am going to try to nickel plate it with my little brush kit. it should work out, but things sure do have to be smooth and shiny for plating to look like anything. But, it has already come a ways- the next two photos are the stem body/steerer tube clamp joint unfinished and then after the first round of filing and sanding.

More to come!