No love for Paul Donohue road bikes

[sausagefingers]

saw that on the ebay thread. very,very nice

 

[hondakid]

An old thread but i've just been given this Paul Donohue bike off a friend.

 

[fiveSixteenths]

Anyone able to help with when this might have been brazed?

 

[mdvineng]

Anyone able to help with when this might have been brazed?

That's TIG welded alloy

 

[pigman]

That's TIG welded alloy

You sure? It has a Reynolds sticker (granted, anyone could add that) but the dropouts look a steel frame type, not the chunky alloy types.
Back in the 90s Reynolds and Columbus had big profile tubesets to make their frames stiffer/lighter/trendier

edit - also a proper seat bolt, not a collar as you would find on an alloy frame

 

[hamster]

I'm with @pigman - that's steel. Looks like late 90's to me, when steel went to fat downtubes. It also fits with no downtube bosses, just cable guides for ergos. My money would be on a 1 1/8" headset as it also has an ahead fork.

 

[fiveSixteenths]

I'm with @pigman - that's steel. Looks like late 90's to me, when steel went to fat downtubes. It also fits with no downtube bosses, just cable guides for ergos. My money would be on a 1 1/8" headset as it also has an ahead fork.

Yep, definitely has this and the 853 sticker is under the original lacquer plus a proper seatpost bolt, plus the dropouts are definitely steel

 

[mdvineng]

Look at the welds

 

[sjcprojects]

Look at the welds

853 can be TIG welded.

 

[mdvineng]

853 can be TIG welded.

As far as I'm aware, only Tig or Mig, as the excess heat from brazing affects the microstructure and turns it brittle.
Found this on Reynolds site.
We now have a new generation of materials in 525, 725, 631, 853 and 953 steels. All of these can be brazed, but the most popular method of assembly is by TIG welding. (on 853 we do recommend that gear fittings etc are silver soldered onto the tubes).