Seat Stay Caps

I think seat stay caps are a really important detail in making a bike look good. I personally like the caps nice and long and I really like it when they're made with inverted tubing.  Making the caps with inverted tubing is a little tricky but I think its well worth it in the end. You can get caps that plug into the ends of the seat stays and they're way easier and faster but I think making your own caps adds more of a personal touch to the frame. 

To make the caps I used a bench grinder to make an angle on the seat stays that was about 4.5cm long. Then I took a half round file that matched the circumference of the tubing I was going to use for the caps and filed a concave along the angle I cut.  I used left over head tube for the concave caps and made sure I filed the seat stays to except them as close as possible. I like using head tubing because its a little thicker and the extra material helps with shaping the cap. I brazed the caps on with brass and made sure I got plenty of fill along the edges. It looks like I went overboard with the brass but I just wanted to make sure I wouldn't have to come back and fill any holes or gaps.

The part I like best about making seat stay caps is watching them take form after you start filing them down. This is the third time I've made these type of caps and its been sort of nerve racking each time you go hacking away at these guys. But the more material I remove the less anxiety I have about screwing them up and they begin to work themselves out.

In the end they always look really sweet to me and I am glad that I put in the extra time and effort. On the next frame I would like to change it up and either try to have the caps wrap around the top of the top tube or maybe do some sort of fast back arrangement.