Many years ago, I was given a classic frame (a 1948 or '49 Duckett) with hand cut lugs - and the down-tube had a deep crush in it, to half way through the tube. I took it to an old-time frame builder, and asked him if he could save the frame. When I went back a week later, he had used blocks just like yours to ease the dent out. He was left with a shallow dent the size of a pea, and he filled it with braze. Just as you did. I am well pleased with the repair.

That this frame was repaired by Paul Brodie substantially increased its value.

I really enjoy your videos, Paul. The content is always highly interesting and well cut. Thank you for sharing your Knowledge with us.

Thanks for this video. Learned a lot!

Mind blown ! How did I not find this channel until now ? Subscribed.

You just got a sub because you proved to me I was wrong about dented frames! Thank you

Thanks a lot Paul for generously sharing your knowledge. Only great people do that!

I’m impressed so much work to fix a dent! Well done

Excellent! Thanks for sharing.

Such an awesome video, great channel that's a very cool trick to do with the wood blocks 😀 👌

You have an easy teaching style Paul, thanks for the lesson 👍

Good job! It's nice to see you do some woodworking too!

Always great handcrafting!👍👍

First time one of your videos was suggested to me. Viewed and subbed. When your video views are that much greater than your subscribers, then you know your channel will grow quickly.

I'm probably showing my age here, but many years ago a frame builder that I used replaced my entire top tube rather than attempt to repair a dent. He carefully sawed off the tube about 1/8" away from where it joined the seat tube and the same at the headstock end. He then filed away the remaining bits smooth before putting on a jig and brazing in a complete new tube. The frame was of course fillet brazed originally and although the repair and a respray cost me about half the cost of a new one I was very pleased with the finished result. The frame was built in Reynolds 531 butted tubing and I remember him saying that the heat of the brazing would always cause a slight loss of tube strength locally but because this was at a joint with another tube it was no detriment.

Thought there where kids having fun in the background... they sound alot like Peacocks. Well, there they were in the backyard of your place. Thanks for the video.

Thanks a lot Paul...I learn a lot from you. From Buenos Aires, Argentina. Thanks.

Yes! now I can repair my kona frame and use it again, every one thought I should scrap that frame. Once I was working in my uncles metal shop and learn almost everything how to work with metal. And I have learned something new today.

Excellent craftsmanship, Thank you.

Not disappointed. But i was hoping to see the dent come out of the frame. Glad to know this is how i would do the same repair. Thought there might be something new to learn, LOL. Thanks for bring us along. Peter.

This is called, being a professional and knowledge throughout years of experience!!!

Great work Mitch.

A wealth of information - I'd heard about the wood block method from a friend who wrenched for the USSR team in the mid 80's, but never seen it in practice.

super good video, thanks for sharing !

You, sir, are a real pro. Thanks for sharing your time-tested knowledge with us neophytes.

I look forward to watching these every week, thank you Paul!!!

Thank you for making this video and explaining it clearly, i have recently decided to build a couple of old bmx gems I've been holding onto for some time. One is a Redline RA340 and the other a dented up 99' Dave Mirra Haro. I will definitely use your method to knocking down a couple of those dents, I was starting to wonder if it would ever happen now I can get it prepared and ready to have it chrome dipped. Thanks and regards, Mike D.👍🏼

Loved that fix. I have a dented frame, also on the top-tube and my local frame builder said, "Leave it." The tube is very thin and he felt like it might crack if it was forced 'back to round' or maybe he was just busy as hell and didn't want to get involved. So it remains...

Already thought you are a Super Man, seeing you file convinced me. Great Videos

Great work

Ingenious, amazing work...

I am an addict to your shows. The idea of frame building is beyond the capabilities of my eyesight. An old man can dream :).

Such an amazing job 👏🏽

Dude your so smart this is very useful

Cool stuff, amazing workshop having the right tools to create sky’s the limit

love it! The tip for handling for low temp intake was really helpful!

Beautiful shop!

Hey, just found your channel. I rented a Brodie once on a trip to Sedona Arizona years ago, would have been 1999ish, I still remember it, a blue hardtail with a white logo and marzocchi bomber. It rode mint.

Good work mr Paul newman !!!

Very nice work 👍🏻🇨🇦

I like the bike stand he uses. My consumer grade POS wobbles every time you touch the bike. His is rock solid. A poor carpenter blames his tools. A great carpenter always has great tools. Lesson learned.

Mr .Paul you is good work super video Thank for the video

absolute legend

At last! Some competition for the calls of the peacocks!

3:45 Peacocks! Interesting video. Always thought the Brodie bikes were sweet.

I've used regular plumbing solder / flux and a propane torch to fill some dents. Easy to file / sand to shape, and couldn't even tell it was dented. Not that it is better than real brazing, just an easier solution with very basic relatively cheap tools and what I had on hand. I did try a stud welder (welds the little pins on) and a slide hammer as I see mentioned in the comments, however, I couldn't get enough force to even budge the dent before the pins snapped (the dent wasn't even as bad the one one in the video here). Perhaps there are stronger pins available, never looked into it, was my dads stud welder from when he did autobody repair. I still have it and have another dented frame, perhaps I'll look into it again sometime. I'll say it was a cheaper BMX frame, chromoly tubing, so not sure the wall thickness compared to road / mountain bike frames, so I suppose results may vary with the stud welder. At any rate, nice video, makes me feel a little better about filling the dent on my frame, felt a bit guilty "hiding" the damage (I still own the frame, so not like I did it to sell, just to make it look better).

Wow long time no-see, hope you are doing well in this COVID-19 situation. We are very envious of your workshop here in Havana

Assuming the frame is steel, you could use an auto body stud welder and weld a stud to the low spot then heat around the dent then pull it with the slide hammer.

Excellent video! Great relaxxed teaching and explanations. I love to learn all about that stuff. All the best, Paul! Cheers from Germany

Cool! I just stumbled across you video. I have know your name for a long time. When I was a kid I worked for Norman Hill Bicycles at the time Derik Bailey was building frames him. I eventually went on to become a machinist. I still have my early nineties Rocky Mountain Blizzard. I wonder if you made that one.

Paul, love the videos as I am a hobby machinist and motorcycle fixer upper wanna be! Curious, when you adjusted the boring head the .076, does the boring head work similar to the lathe and half the amount dialed in? On a side note, one of my friends (who suggested your channel) just pulled the trigger on a Triumph cub! Yep, he went off the deep end for sure!!!!

solid work ,enjoy the channel. id be interested to know if any pdr (paintless dent repair) techs have had any sucsess in doing a pdr on a dent like this. i did paint for a few local fame builders and a few large bike manufactures and have alot of experance working on this stuff but the idea of pdr a bike never crossed my mind untell watching this for some reason. if anyone reading this knows of someone who has let me know.

love you, man

I just purchased a vanni losa frameset, has a very minor dent on the top tube, might have to try filling it with braze. Too bad i cant save the paintwork, in the end im a good painter so i should be able to recreate the finish. The finish is a white pearl base with candy red transitioning to orange, yellow till it reaches the seat tube.

I would have filled the tube with water and freeze it while carefully observing, the ice will push the dent out. Its cold work and takes many hours in the cold watching for just the right moment to stop the cold treatment, but the results are spectacular.

nota 10 ta de parabéns..

Dear Mr. Brodie, I've got the same frame, a RM équipe from 1993 with a dent at nearly the same position, but it was a little bit smaler. After I've seen your video I tried to roll out the dent with selfmade tube-blocks like you declared and it worked very well. Many thanks for your video. Finally I put grease between tubeblock and framedent so I could press it harder by rolling out the dent. At least there was nearly no high spot and no dent left. For heating up I unfortunately don't have the right workshop so I was contented with the little leaving dent. Many thanks for giving your idea. I don't dare to file the frame because the tange ultimate ultralight tubewall should have a thickness of 0.6 mm. Is it really without problem to file the frame? Yours sincerely Rainer

Hey Paul, have you ever tried to pull the dent out first then fill what’s left of the dent if any? I know it’s not the same material but I do it all the time on 8mm thick 4” round copper tube. (Industrial radiator manifolds) but the principal will be the same, I Braze a rod in the middle of the dent then heat all around the dent until I see a rainbow colouring (like oil in water). Next I grab a pair of pliers pinch the other end of the rod then tap the underneath of the pliers with a hammer. You ideally need to tap in opposite direction the dent went in if that makes sense? Heat and repeat until the dent is out. Snap/wiggle the rod off file/fill/sand make good and paint. For really big dents you may have to pull in two or three places. Works great for me, all the best fella. Owen.

Hello Paul: Very interesting! I didn't know how dents are fixed. What would happen without fixing? Bending? Breaking? Does a frame lose static and stability with a dent or is it more an optical thing? Does it work only with bronze on a steel frame or would silver also do the job? Is it possible to repair also dents on aluminum frames? Thank you for replying.

Thanks for making this. It is very timely for me. I made a lugged frame and used thin tubing for the top tube. Tange Prestige 7/4/7 in 31.8 I crashed yesterday and put a nice big dent in the top tube. I got most of the dent out with a tube block and I was planning to use cycle design system 48 silver brazing rod (what I have) to fill the remaining dimple since the tube is heat treated. Do you think that is this acceptable for heat treated tubing?

great video man! one general question, does this filling in job help with strength or is it more cosmetic?

I like mitch, because he said you needed to do the little dent as well. I like how he kept detail & principles to your work.

Great video Paul thank you. Can I ask roughly what thickness of cardboard you use when you double it up in the mill? It looks like dense thin cardboard rather than the Amazon box stuff? Thanks!

I meant to ad that that dent looks like a garage-dent, not something that was a ride gone bad. They're harder to fix than when a handlebar swings around.

You could use air pressure (inside the tube) to pop it up... That's the most efficient way to do it. You could also apply a little bit of heat to soften it up...

I'm going to make a frame clamp just to enjoy that lovely sound it makes. Lol. 🙂

Paul, What about a bit of beeswax or linseed oil on those clamp faces?

I have watched videos about an induction dent removal system for car bodywork and I wondered whether this would work on bicycle frame tubes.

Gangster! Thanks for your time!

Hi Paul any tips for removing a dent from a curved tube on a cruiser type frame. Any ideas how I could go about doing it would be much appreciated. Great content thanks for sharing.

love watching you work... thanks for sharing your amazing knowledge... 👏 once upon a time I taught autoshop.. richest town in the Bay Area... my kids drove Mercedes and Jaguars... which is why they hired me ;;☆》.. of many jobs... it remains my all time favorite... my biggest problem was getting them to go home... big fun... an honor question: I usually use brazing rod with the flux on the outside... is the separate flux better?

Paul, I quite enjoy your videos. I have a question for you. I am restoring an old Norco Sports; it is a late 70's or early 80s japanese made frame. The seat stays were bent to the point where they were almost touching. I ended up using a rebar bending bar, but stopped because I noticed I put a couple dents in the seat stay tubes. How would you recommend I try to bend the stays so that they go back to being straight. Do you know if frame blocks are commercially available? Pedro (Edmonton Alberta)

What's the functional difference between the aluminium and wooden tubing blocks? Could you hold tubes in the mill for cutting using wooden ones? What are the advantages of the metal ones? The machined alu tubing blocks arlways seemto be machine to hightolerance. Does the parallelism of the sides actually matter when building a bike frame?

OMG - you've got a Whippet safety? Beautiful machine 😍.

Greetings mr Paul….. I have an aluminum Bottecchia road bike that has a dent on the down tube by the bottom bracket,,,, does this method work on aluminium,,,, once again great video you and mr Mitch….

I would think the heat from the brazing would seriously affect the strength of the heat-treated tubing.

Hello Mr. Brodie! I have a question - I have a Salsa Moto Rapido with a dent under the down tube. Since it's an aluminum/scandium alloy, is there anything I can do to repair or reinforce it? Any feedback is appreciated. Thank you, and fantastic channel!

Mr Brodie, Why not use a tack weld automotive dent puller? The type where you tack on a pull tab in the center of the dent and then after pulling you cut off and grind down the tab! Also can be done with adhesive pull tabs. I know steel tubing may be only less than .2mm wall thickness but if a snatch tool or puller were used gently it would raise those dent centers up and then the split blocks and body hammer could be used and so forth. Also to avoid heating the tube and weakening it I have uses 60/40 tin lead filler with a much lower flowing point to level up the low spot but now days the tack on dent pull is the way to go.

I have quite a larger an spreaded dent in an aluminium frame, is this method suitable?

Paul, what is the deal with the custom dynafile? Does the twist in the belt help?

Hi Paul. Great video btw 👍🏻. Can you do same approach to fix aluminum frame ?

When I got a dent in my trombone slide I took it to a repairman and he had a series of steel balls on a cable. He'd tap one small ball through the dent, then the next size up, and so on until the dent was gone. He did a really good job.

Yeah a little bit of a bend from your frame block and torquing the top tube back and forth.

Could a stud be brazed on. Knock the dent out with a slide hammer? Great looking repair!

Great video with great information. Question. I just purchase an 853 Reynolds MTB frame. The brand is Cotic, and was made in England. The frame has a much smaller dent that the one on the video. This is the question, since Im going to use this frame for MTB, do you think is still safe to use or should I get it fixed? Thank you!

Nevermind, I see you have a dent video. Does filling the dent add strength or is it for looks? Thanks

So interesting. Does the brass act as a filler or does it add some strength?

*Easy to setup and maintain.*

very interesting. does the braising strengthen the frame or is it for looks?

I purchased a vintage bmx frame off eBay years ago really cheap because the head tube is dented. It's a chrome frame so it needs to be perfect . I used a pipe expander to get it mostly out but still needs work. I'm trying to get it perfect if possible without needing to be re chromed because it's in really good condition for a 40 yo frame any suggestions.

When building road bicycles from Chromoly, what is the typical wall thickness do bike manufactures and frame builders use? What thickness would the bare minimum that you should use?

can you do the same if the frame is not cylindrical like a mountain bike downtube? I dented mine pretty bad first day i got it but its not cylindrical.

That was simply therapeutic.......All is right in the world for 15:27.

So, how'd you do it with ovalised tubing like Columbus Max (the clamp)? That'd be cool to see :-)

would that brazing technique and the flame temperature be the same if I did that with a 7005 aluminium frame and 5356 filler instead of bronze filler? and would bronze filler work as good as 5356 filler for brazing 7005 aluminium? Thanks for the video.

Awesome

Damn! I guess I want worry about the little pea size ding on the top tube of my Yo Eddy

ex-KEF engineer here. Just spotted a Reference Series 101 on your shelf. I'm still using mine 30 years after leaving KEF. Do you still have a working pair?

can you do the same for aluminum bike frames? what would be different?

Just picked up a Gary Fisher Hoo koo e koo that has about a 1/4” deep dent in the top tube like this frame had. I traded an old squier electric guitar for it, I didn’t notice the dent till I got home. The guy who traded with me only had pictures of one side of the bike, so I didn’t get to see it in pictures. Anyways, I’m thinking my dent is not so bad compared to this one but I’d hate to have the frame fail on me while riding. My question is, if I just ride around the city and some light trails (mostly gravel, no jumping) do you think I’d be fine to leave it alone? I would love to fix it but I don’t have a setup like yours. Thanks.