Billions of tig welded chromo frames still in service after 20, 30, 40 years of service, suggests that is a tale.
That is a good looking bike. Looking forward to your first ride report. The design does have the possibility of being a giant spring. Love your artistic seat post support. Very nice. Carrying that artistic theme through to your rear drop outs was a great touch. Keep up the cool work.
A steel frame builder told me that tig localizes the heat of welding very well and works very well on heat treated alloy steels. Stick and other forms of welding heated a much larger area causing the steel to lose its heat temper wherever it got too hot. This weakened the joints greatly causing failure. Brazing occurs at a much lower temperature and does not effect the heat treatment processes for hi strength heat treated alloy steels. American manufacturers used mild steel with no heat treatment process for strength to speak of. Thus Schwinn and other manufacturers electric butt welded their frames with no loss of strength to the designs because heat treatment was not being used as a strength component.
That stem will definitely help.
I got in a good test ride this afternoon. It is quite sturdy. It is not going to be a daily rider, so I don't foresee any issues with flex.
Postage could be an issue from down under
