Frame Building Course
As a keen mountain biker and maker I have always been intrigued by framebuilding. I always felt that the craft was mystified and confusing with differing tubing standards and joining techniques.
In July 2022 I was lucky enough to get a place on The Bicycle Academy 5 day framebuilding course. I had some ideas of interesting bikes I would like to build in the future, and this course would be a great stepping stone to the journey of framebuilding.
The course was taught in an intuitive manner, combining science and practical learning in a very enjoyable process.
The content of the course covered everything from bike design and fit, tubing specifications, mitering, brazing and myth busting. There is something very centric about spending a week with no other distractions other than learning and creating.
The tubes which will at some point become a bike!
The frame all tacked up in the Bicycle Academy low cost jig.
All cooled and ready for final brazing
All finished! I met some great people on the course, here are Ben and Aiden with their finished frames.
I decided to build a gravel / bike packing frame, as I would like to do some longer distance bike packing and cycle touring. I went for a head angle of 71.5 and a seat tube angle of 72.5. I have allowed for running 700c wheels to fit tires up to 45mm. The angles are on steeper side of modern full on gravel bikes, as this bike is mostly going to be used on fire roads. Most importantly I included lots of mounts, so the bike can take a pannier, a top tube bag and three water bottles. Just needs some paint now!
There’s something very mesmerizing about brazing. Watching molten brass flow between two tubes when it works seems like poetry. And seriously frustrating when it doesn’t! The brazes on my frame are pretty beefy- but strong. I was thinking about filing them down, but I think there’s beauty in imperfection and makers marks, especially as it is my first frame. It would be nice to look back in a few years of making them and consider how far I have come.
The capillary brazing between the rear dropouts, chainstay and seatstay needed some finishing work. I filed these down with a flat file, and finished off the smaller imperfections with some 60 and 120 grit emery paper. The dropouts and axle were sourced from Paragon Machine Works.
The finished frame fresh from the painters! I decided to go for a brighter airforce blue, as most of my recent bikes have been darker colours I thought I would brighten up my life! Big thanks to Goldburn Finishers in Lindford for the amazing paint job. The powder coating should provide a tough, hardwearing paintwork for the bikes future travels!
