By Bike

To avoid an overdose of esoteric information, I’ll wrap up the framebuilding review by posting two pictures:

1. Finished frame! Here you see a very tired me mustering up a smile to celebrate the completion of the frame & fork. This was the end of working over 13 hours straight (OK, I probably took 10 minutes for lunch). In any case it was exhausting!

2. Three frames! This shot is really interesting because it shows the affect of body measurements on frame geometry. We designed each frame to blend three elements: fitting the the person building it, accommodating the kind of riding they planned to do, and adding stylistic elements to reflect aesthetic preferences.

The result is three very different frame/fork combos. I built a lugged sport-touring frame, Josh built a fillet-brazed “go-fast” bike, and Daniel built a lugged frame designed for a unique wheel size (650b) and low-riding front panniers.

I really enjoyed learning this craft, and am committed to doing more building now that I’m back on my own turf. I think that the absence of available classic, beautifully designed city bikes and touring bikes isn’t a sign that there is no public desire. Instead, I think mass manufacturing has basically inverted the signal-to-noise ratio of cycling aesthetics. We get bling, unnecessary obsessions over lightness on bikes in every category, excessive and crass branding, and a glut of racing and mountain bikes instead of comfortable, useful and attractive bikes for regular folks. Hopefully I can contribute to shifting this.

In other news, Green-Up assembled a small team to run in the YMCA’s 5k fundraiser race. I jumped in on the fun and somehow came first in my age category!

Things are going awesome out here, and we’re just a few days away from wrapping up.

I haven’t been able to keep on top of blogging because we’ve more or less been pulling 14 hour days for a week and a half straight. My life has mostly consisted of:

• measuring
• cutting
• filing
• brazing
• repeat

The really cool thing about this course is that it isn’t just instruction to slam together some tubes and call it a bicycle. It’s more of a bicycle craftsman bootcamp, developing fine-tuned skills in brazing and filing (both easy things to do poorly!). We marry those skills to a strong learned sense of design aesthetic.

If I was to make a checklist for the whole process, it would probably be in excess of 600 steps. Add in troubleshooting and filing/brazing skill…well, this is about a year’s worth of learning compacted into two ultra intense weeks!

Anyway, I’ll do a comprehensive update and review when I return. Onwards!

Framebuilding essentially boils down into three complex skills:

• Setting stuff up right & cutting it to fit
• Brazing stuff
• Filing stuff

Now, “filing” has never come across as a particularly enviable or impressive talent (I mean, after all, I can jump through my leg!). But it turns out that it is, in fact, an easy thing to do badly and a hard thing to do well. Having spent the last four days doing just that for hours on end (note the dearth of blog action between posts!), I feel pretty awesome re: my filing skillz. There’s a great deal of technique necessary, as well as an eye for what’s needed where.

It’s this meticulous attention to detail in every element of the bike that, I imagine, sets this course apart from other framebuilding experiences. Doug is fanatical about detail and about raising skill levels far above basic competency. It’s not like we’re just learning to throw some tubes together to build a frame: we’re learning the sensitive eye and hand, the fine art of finishing joints and smoothing brazes. I don’t feel extra snooty w/r/t bikes now, but I do feel like my eye for good design and finish work has been radically reoriented and informed.

Anyway, here are some shots to track my progress:

Back again, frame bloggin’ away! It’s been a long two days, working well into the night both times. While I don’t have tons of work on my frame to show off, we’ve been building skills and I’ve been doing some detail work.
I’ve been slowed down by the fact that my bottom bracket shell and fork crown still haven’t shown up yet. Apparently this part of the world has been blanketed in snow, so I’m cautiously attributing it to that. If they don’t arrive tomorrow then some drastic measures will have to be taken…
Anyway, we started yesterday by learning to braze. It’s a challenge! It’s quite a bit different (and harder) than my little experience with MIG welding. But, much like working with MIG, once you start to intuit the way metals respond to heat, you get a better sense of control. It’s not something you tend to encounter in your day-to-day life, but like many things that we learn to respond to intuitively instead of consciously, it’s just a matter of creating a firm understanding of it in yer brains.
I benefitted greatly by getting feedback from both Doug and Herbie, his assistant. This is as good a time as any to mention what I’ve failed to so far: Doug is a fabulous instructor, with an enduringly deep understanding of what he (and we) are doing. He’s a great guy with an excellent sense of humour and tremendous patience. It’s a pleasure to work with him.

Here’s Herbie working with Josh on one of his first brazes:

Here are my first two test brazes:
What you’re looking at is a sleeve of metal attached to a smaller diameter tube. With brazing, you clean all the pieces, cover them in goopy flux to aid in connection, then heat the tubes. Once you the flux is brought to the right temperature, you melt silver at a top edge of the joint (called the shore) and draw it through the joint with your flame (the silver is attracted to heat). After some futzing and finicking, your goal is to end up with silver on both sides of the joint (meaning you’ve pulled it from the top to the bottom) all the way around, with a sharp transition at the shore between (in this example) the outside tube and the inside tube.

Next, we brazed demo bottom bracket shells. These require a fair bit more finesse with regards to heat control, and it took some solid concentration to get it right. I felt pretty happy with them after they came out of the soak bath, though! (that’s why it’s all rusty)

Here’s the inside of the shell. You can see that the bottom lip of the seat tube is now happily caked in silver, no longer are it & the shell two seperate entities!

After the intro-braze-stravaganza, I went back to mitiring. The next task was my down tube. Bingo!

Actually, these quick pictures make this stuff look far, far too easy — there’s a solid 15 or 20 minutes of measuring, checking, test cutting, etc that go into this nice fit. I can’t stress how potentially catastrophic things can be if you do this wrong. Or, more gently, how easy it is to screw this up by not rigourously paying attention. The angles need to be perfect, you must use the correct cutter size, you need to ensure the butted (thicker) section of tubes are long enough; that the planing orientation of your tube is correct; that the cut orientation is correct…
In fact, I almost wrecked this tube by rushing through some steps and cutting too far up the butt. It was stupid and almost cost me $50 — but some jiggery and black magic made everything better (I can’t give away all the secrets, it’s what I’m paying the big bucks for!)

Anyway, here’s the seattube:downtube mitre. I hand-mitred this joint with a file for practice. I actually really enjoy hand mitiring; it’s very satisfying to create that perfect joint with your bare hands. However, I must say that I’ve fallen deeply in love with the vertical mill that we’re using: it’s a humbling and awesome machine.

And this, ladies and gents, is my fully mitred front triangle (with lugs in place for decorative goodness):

Next step was a finicky bit of zen: filing dropouts. Cast dropouts arrive with all sorts of irregularities, and since we’re making Super Awesome Arty Bikes, we’re gettin’ rid of that bizness!
I filed the edges square and sharpened the points. It’s almost a silly detail, but it’s what makes this stuff a real craft.
Here’s the front dropouts; the finished one is on the left and the unfiled one is on the right. (the difference is a lot more clear in person)

And here are my rear dropouts, with the filed one on the right and the unfiled on the left. That’s right, I spent 15 minutes filing the bottom of my non-drive side rear dropout. Likely to spend the rest of its days caked in mud.

And since Doug is a total champ, he brass brazed to fill a teensy casting irregularity in my dropout.

And finally, my day ended by raking my fork blades. A fork blade starts out its life as a straight piece of metal. If you were to make this into a fork, it makes for unpleasant suspension and awkward handling. Good handling is a magical combination of fork rake and fork trail. It’s beyond the scope of this blog to go into that. Just trust that I have a solidly vague idea of what I’m talking about, or Google it!
We have to bend the fork blade into the proper radius to create the rake specific to the bike I’ve designed. Funnily enough, this is a delicate job that relies on the biggest act of brute strength in framebuilding! Here’s my fork in the jig:

Tomorrow: possibly some lug cutouts, some rear triangle mitiring and brazing, and fork brazing. Hopefully my stuff arrives!

It became clear this morning that some of the parts I had ordered (the lugs in particular) are officially MIA, so we needed to make some small adjustments to my frame geometry to accommodate the Henry James lugs I’ll be using instead. They’re a little less schmancy looking out of the box, but I’m here to learn more than I am to build The World’s Most Greatest Bicycle.

Checking out the lugs with some demo tubing

An explanation for those who have only got a passing interest in what I’m doing out here:

• Tubes: A bicycle is composed of several tubes. Each tube meets meets its corresponding tube at a specific angle created by the bike’s geometry, wheel size, and whole whack of other tidbits that you probably don’t care about. On a regular bike, you have a top tube, head tube, down tube, seat tube, two seat stays and two chain stays.
• Lugs: these strengthen the tube intersections by sliding over the tubes at the connecting points. The lugs are designed to work at certain angles of tube intersections, so you are actually limited to specific lug choices by the frame you design (or, in my case, the other way around).
• Mitres: Mitiring is all about cutting the tubes so they intersect their corresponding tube smoothly. I.e., you can’t just have flat ends of tubes sticking against eachother: you need to cut (either with a mill, lathe or by very skilled hand) an angled valley in the end of a tube to meet ***perfectly*** with its corresponding tube. My life involved minimal (read: no) mitiring previous to today. Funnily enough, mitiring is actually REALLY important w/r/t framebuilding.
• Filing: Lugs need to be prepped before they’re even used. Sometimes this involves filing or reaming their internal dimensions to make a tube fit easily. They then need to be given an aesthetic treatment which, despite my interest in these things, I can’t say that I have a refined sense of the good or bad qualities of a slope towards a peak of a lug. You know, it’s one of the important things in life: working on things like global injustice, child poverty, climate change, as well as lug slopes.

So today, I mitred my seat tube where it intersects the bottom bracket. This was an easy cut because it’s 90 degrees.

Then I fiddled with things to make sure everything was peachy keen on the fixture. Returning to that holy grail setup again and again and again is the only way I can proceed without feeling like I’m hanging desperately in the unknown.

Next step was to mitre the top tube where is intersects the head tube. This was a way more challenging cut because the frame geometry starts to come into play. Grade 10 trigonometry, don’t fail me now!

Next I mitred the top tube where it intersects the seat tube. Again, more math. There are also things to keep in mind re: the wall thickness of the tubing you use (this tubing is thicker at the ends and thinner in the middle, and you have to be careful not to cut off too much of the thick end of the tube and compromise the bike’s…well, everything, I suppose…)

I was very pleased to get the seat tube mitred dead on in one shot, especially after taking a long time dialing in the top tube mitre.

Josh and Daniel worked on filing for most of the time that I spent mitring, then we switched roles at the end. I started on a head lug tonight, and will continue the great filing adventure tomorrow.

Meanwhile in the world outside, it’s snowing big time. Beautiful, endless powdery snow.

I arrived in Niles, Michigan yesterday around 4pm, unpacked and spent much of Superbowl Sunday getting groceries & cleaning up my living space. I’m staying in Doug’s parent’s house, a curiously antiquated Grey Gardens sort of estate that adjoins the property on which he currently lives.

My official Framebuilding Morning Mug, courtesy the cupboard. I don't know much about Danish ethnic stereotypes, but it seems somehow apropos given the bicycle theme of this adventure.

The shop is an appropriately mad-scientist small castle in the back. Two other people arrived later on in the day to join in the class — Daniel from Portland, Oregon; and Josh from St Paul, Minnesota. Good folks, and, so far as I can tell, we’re all on about the same level with regards to bikes: lots of geekery in the areas with which we’ve had experience (mechanics, fixin’ stuff, reading blogs, etc), and zero ability in the area we’re about to take on. A perfect learning opportunity!

Those blue Hetchins frames are virtually historical artifacts!

We started this morning in the shop with a short history lesson of US framebuilding: why things are the way the are/have been, and who is responsible for the state of affairs. Doug is well-situated as a teacher with one of the longest histories of framebuilding in the US, having apprenticed under legendary UK builders in the early 70s and being currently connected with a wide range of builders today. There is also Tons of Cool Stuff in his shop, namely snazzy frames from all sorts of historic builders, and a number of his own builds that are knock-your-socks-off stunning. Seeing the skill in a handmade bike is really (really and truly) only something you can appreciate in person. I’ve understood the principles, qualities and arguments to be made for handmade for a long time, but geeze — when you actually see them, they have this genius subtle quality that emotes form, skill and care.

A bilaminate head tube lug built by Doug. I can't begint to imagine how many hours of work went into this.

This fixture allows every possible contact point to be fine-tuned to the rider's body on the fly

After the introduction, we started designing our frames. First, Josh was fitted. We took measurements from a bike he’s looking to emulate (in some respects), and recreated those conditions on the bike fitting fixture.

From left to right: Herbie (Doug's assistant), Doug, Daniel, and Josh

Certain elements were monkeyed around with to create a ideal fit conditions (the tenuous balance between biomechanical efficiency, aerodynamic efficiency, and comfort), and he was off to the races to start inputting those measurements into a fixture.

I’m building a fairly run of the mill sport touring frame: not a “go fast” bike per se, and not a loaded touring bike either. Something squarely in the “meh, let’s just play around” category. With this in mind, the above mentioned triad of “fit” concerns is more heavily weighted to comfort than to, say, aerodynamics. After we replicated my Marinoni’s setup on the fitting fixture, it turned out that I’ve been riding with significantly too long reach (the distance from your saddle to your bars). We made some other adjustments to dial in the fit just so, and I’m ending up with a bike that is definitely custom (bike geekery alert): a 71 degree seat tube, 72.5 degree head tube, 56cm top tube and 59cm seat tube. If this means nothing to you, just keep in mind that many off the shelf bikes today have 73 degree seat tube and head tube, and identical top tube and seat tube lengths. If you want to know more about the significance of these measurements, just ask in the comments!

To any of those "Well, you just stick pieces of metal together, how hard can it be?" people, every piece of metal on this fixture moves, and many things move in relation to one another. Tire size, saddle type, seatpost style, bars, brakes, fork crown etc all factor heavily into this operation. But this is my bike to be!

The day wrapped up with Daniel getting his fit and design figured out, and the three of us staring and fiddling ponderously with the fabulously complicated (and subtly brilliant) frame fixtures that we input the fit measurements into. The only concern right now is that my lugs have not arrived (or have been misplaced), so there may be some expedited ordering taking place tomorrow to get the parts necessary to put this crazy machine together.