The Bicycle Academy: 7 Day Frame Building Course

Day 1:

What an amazing place – somewhere dedicated to helping people create bicycles of all shapes and sizes. It feels so incredibly immersive, almost glutinous, as I’ve never been able to chat so much about bicycles and riding. And the real clincher is the calibre of the people that you are talking with. When Robin Mather casually walked over and asked how I was getting on I honestly had to tell myself not to hug him immediately. You’ve got Paul Burford from BTR Fabrications ambling through the building with his Springer Spaniel, on his way to their workshop next door. While Tom Sturdy orders the next batch of tubing to maintain the healthy stock levels. And just the general air of quiet, considered knowledge is palpable. But, and this is the trick, it’s all so humble. We all eat lunch together, which the staff take in turns to make, and we eat it while chatting about everyday stuff. But there is always this under-lying collective appreciation and desire for knowledge associated with the humble bicycle.
 
The next thing to strike me is just the sheer quality of what’s being taught. Not just because of the experience and clarity of those teaching it, but also the thought that has gone into how you get a novice like me to absorb all of this information. I’m in the fortunate position to have done another frame building course at another venue about eight years ago. But the difference in what and how I’m learning is like night and day. The Bicycle Academy seems like a very appropriate name.
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If I’m honest, I was incredibly disappointed with that first frame building course I did – it all felt way too rushed, I’m truly embarrassed to show people the frame that I built, and I certainly didn’t leave with the knowledge to build another one. So, I then decided to sign myself on to a night-course in welding at Hammersmith and Fulham College in the hope of gaining a better understanding of brazing. But this was primarily aimed at people from the automotive industry and didn’t really help a great deal. Finally, I bought a Jiggernaught (an MDF frame jig) in the hope that if I could at least get some tubes mitred and held in the correct position then I would be heading in the right direction. But I ended up just sort of running out of steam and eventually gave up on the idea in about 2014. However, the itch has slowly returned, this time with the added impetus of wanting to put my thinking on mountain bike geometry into practice. And so, I now find myself at The Bicycle Academy on their seven-day frame building course.
 
Day one and we spent the morning going through some theory on bike geometry as well as some structural considerations. Then, after lunch, we finalised the geometry of the frames that we will build, and I began to work out how I might get my chainstays to work. These are probably the most complicated part of my frame, having to accommodate a three-inch tyre, clearance for the front sprocket, a relatively wide belt, tensioning of the aforementioned belt as well as a 180mm disc rotor.

Chainstay layout

I’m on the course with two others. I know that I’m a bit weird to have spent the best part of the last two-years developing my thoughts about what I wanted to make. But one student’s only criteria was that he wanted a 27.5+ mountain bike while the other, when asked what he might want to make, literally said ‘I don’t really know’. Clearly, I’m even more of an oddball than I had thought!

​Day 2:

Today started with the selection of our tubeset. It reminded me of buying pick’n’mix from our local Post Office when I was a kid – you were given a plastic tub to fill up with your choice of Fruit Salad’s, fizzy cola bottles and coconut mushrooms. Only this time I had a long wooden box and a pile of metal tubes. Columbus Zona seemed to cover most of my needs, but my chosen dropouts needed something special made-up to help strengthen their connection to the chainstays. Twenty minutes later Robin Mather had turned some steel bar into two beautiful, custom plugged lugs. Amazing.

Pick'n'mix tubeset

​This was followed by some brazing theory. It probably goes without saying, but these guys really know their stuff. Not just how to lay perfect fillets, but how to explain the process to others in a way that lets you understand exactly what’s happening. If this course stands apart from the one that I did before, it’s in the clarity of the instruction when it comes to brazing. Previously, I felt that I had never properly got to grips with brazing because I never really understood the process and so I was still nervous about putting my newly learned theory into practice, even after such expert tuition.
 
I needn’t have worried. The first time we started brazing was along a simple piece of flat metal with our teacher, Tom Sturdy, guiding our hands like we were playing pool on a first date. This complimented the earlier teaching perfectly, so that even if things didn’t go to plan, you knew why things had gone wrong and how to correct it. Essentially, it puts you in a position of control, allowing you to immediately focus on perfecting your technique, rather than trying to second guess what’s going on.
 
Initially, it felt a bit like the first time that I rode a motorbike – there seemed to be so many things to do all at the same time that it all feels very daunting. But, firstly, Tom explains the things that are most important to focus on and, secondly, many of these things soon become semi-sub-conscious actions. Amazingly, my first attempt at brazing two tubes together was a reasonable effort. In fact, it was probably better than anything that I had ever done before, and this was all thanks to Tom’s instruction. Just keep thinking: rate of travel (torch), dwell time (filler) and orientation (work). Then all that is left to do is focus on toes, foot and throat (the brazing equivalent of head, shoulders, knees and toes!).
 
Easily the worst thing about the whole day is that I know that I now have to wait an entire weekend before I can get back to it!

My first tube-to-tube fillet braze

​Day 3:

​Today was pretty frustrating and so a little disappointing. Having already picked out my tubeset, today was meant to be all about starting the process of mitring their ends and fitting them in the jig. The morning was spent practicing the required skills on some test pieces and I’d forgotten just how pleasing it can be when you achieve a really tight mitre between two tubes. My miniature downtube felt beautifully snug, nestling between the headtube and bottom bracket shell – it almost seems a shame to cover it in brass!

Miniature practice pieces

​After some lunch we turned to the actual tubes that we will be using to build our frames. I already knew that I was missing my headtube – it’s on order and will hopefully turn-up tomorrow. But this wasn’t an issue as the plan was to start with the mitre at the bottom of the seat tube where it meets the bottom bracket. However, when I checked the seat tube it turned out that it was not the one that we had previously thought it was and so was unsuitable for my purposes. An alternative was found, but we later discovered that this had been ovalised (thankfully we didn’t discover this too late!)
 
Not perturbed, we decided that I would set about mitring the downtube instead. However, this had some very odd butting (down to 0.5mm at one end), which didn’t tally with any spec sheet. A second down tube was located, but this suffered from exactly the same issue. Much head scratching ensued. Right at the end of the day a third, suitable down tube was found, but by this stage it was all a bit too late to start anything meaningful.
 
So, I seemed to spend a lot of the day looking at tubes that weren’t any good to me and waiting for something more appropriate to be found. As I say, pretty frustrating. In the end I spent the final hour practicing a bit more brazing, so the day was far from a complete waste of time, but disappointing after a weekend of anticipation. Hopefully, I can get properly stuck-in to the tubing tomorrow.

​Day 4:

​What a difference a day makes! My headtube arrived in the post, while a suitable seat tube (which apparently doesn’t appear in the official Columbus catalogue) and the monster of all down tubes were both located within 15 minutes of arriving this morning. This turn around in fortunes was orchestrated by Tom Sturdy, who had returned to the workshop after a day away, bringing with him an unflappable calm that seems to put everyone at ease. I think I’m in danger of having a man-crush!
 
So, the day was spent almost entirely on fabricating the front triangle. Seat tube, down tube and then top tube have all been mitred and are now in the jig. I was working flat-out all day, thinking that I’d done loads. Then I stepped back and realised just how far I still needed to go with only three days left. Still, if you squint then it’s almost starting to look like a bicycle.

The front triangle mitred and in the jig

​The only let-up in the measuring, cutting and filing was another short bit of brazing practice. This little-and-often approach is really working (and I’m sure that’s not by chance!) You do a bit, pause, think about what didn’t work so well, have another go and then move on to something else entirely different. It stops you from getting bogged down or too tired (and trust me, concentrating that hard is tiring!) and, again, the quality of the teaching is just fantastic. 

​Day 5:

​Today was all about the chainstays. It’s amazing that these two relatively skinny tubes at the back of the bike require so much attention, taking as long to prepare as the entire front triangle. In my case, they were further complicated by my choice of dropouts – Paragon Machine Works’ sliding dropouts. Tom suggested that the connection to the chainstays needs to be beefed up, which is where the plugged lugs that Robin made for me on Day 2 came into effect. These actually needed tig welding to the (stainless steel) dropouts before being brazed to the chainstays. Tom quickly did this for me while I observed (my face guard even had flames painted on it!) and I realised just how difficult this type of welding is – it requires surgical levels of steadiness and precision.
 
This is also where my 1:1 chainstay drawing came into its own (again from Day 2), helping to ensure the stays successfully thread their way from bottom bracket to dropout while avoiding the front sprocket and tyre. This is what led us to choose the double-bend stays that I’ve ended up with – easily my favourite tubes on the whole bike (you’ve got to have a favourite tube after all).
 
Right at the end of the day there was just time to start considering the seat stays. The pre-bent items that I was hoping to use were soon found to be lacking when it came to providing the required tyre clearance. In their stead we are going to create our own from standard 18mm tubing. Some judicious use of a bar-bender and these are now ready to start mitring.

Chainstays done!

​With the front triangle and chainstays in the jig it’s now possible to get a really good sense of what the frame will end up looking like. The 44mm headtube, massive downtube and tall chainstays contrast brilliantly with the relatively skinny top tube and constant-diameter seat stays. I’m absolutely buzzing about the next couple of days – getting the rest of the fabricating finished and brazing it all together.

​Day 6:

​The day started with two new students arriving for their 7-day framebuilding course. It seems like both a life-time ago and like it was only yesterday that I was in the same position. And also a stark reminder, if one were needed, that I don’t have long left to complete my frame.
 
My morning was spent trying to get my head around the seat stay mitres, at the point where they join the seat tube. This is not a job to undertake lightly, requiring all of my spatial awareness in combination with a good deal of frustrated muttering to eventually end up with two identical and tight mitres. Once these were complete I attempted to silver braze the plugged lugs to the dropout-end of each stay (that Robin had made for me on Day 2 and which were now attached to the dropouts). The first stay worked perfectly, but for whatever reason the silver refused to flow properly on the second stay, despite Robins expert guidance. So, we took the decision to stop, pull it all apart, clean it up and start again later on once it had all cooled down.
 
In the meantime I cleaned up the rest of the frame tubes, drilled holes in my down tube and seat tube for my bottle bosses, and created an elliptical hole (also in the seat post) for my internal dropper post cable routing. Everything then went back into the jig, measurements were double checked and I made sure that the bottom bracket was the right way around before tacking everything together. The only exception was the aforementioned seat stay. On the second attempt the silver brazing worked as expected and so this joint has been left to soak overnight, wrapped in a damp rag, which should hopefully make it easier to clean tomorrow.
 
Most importantly, when I stepped back from the jig at the end of the day there was definitely no denying that what it was holding was very frame-like. 

Tacked and ready for some fillet brazing

​Day 7:

​The final day and still a lot to do. It started by cleaning up the seat stay that had been left to soak overnight. Then this was tacked into place. Next-up, it was time for the sharp-end of the course – brazing the frame together. The decision had been taken the night before that the three of us on the course would each be assigned our own teacher to take us through this final day. I was honoured to have Robin Mather watching over my every move and calmly steering me back on course, often before I’d even realised things were starting to run away from me.
 
If the fillets on my frame look in anyway half decent then it is down to Tom Sturdy’s excellent teaching at the very beginning of the course, the ‘little-and-often’ daily brazing practice and, most importantly, Robin’s wise words on this final day. By the end of the frame brazing I really felt like I was in control of what was going on with the ability to identify issues and take action with confidence. If it isn’t already apparent, this is a massive endorsement for the effectiveness of the course.
 
At this point, I stood back with a sense of massive relief that I hadn’t done anything catastrophically stupid, and euphoric at the object that I had just created. I even let myself think that the end was now in sight. That was until Robin wrote down a long tick list of everything that we still needed to do. First on the list was to dimple the chainstays before reaming the seat post. This latter task felt like an unusually physical thing to do after the relative finesse of the last few days. Then I prepared the seat stay and chain stay bridges while Robin tig welded the non-drive-side seat stay to the stainless dropout. These bridges were then brazed into place after a quick alignment check (before the rear triangle became even more rigid) that showed nothing untoward. At this point Robin noticed an almost invisible line in the tig weld. It might have been nothing or it might have been a crack that could have propagated over time. Either way, better to be safe than sorry, so it would need to be tig welded again – another task to be added to our list.
 
Now it was time for a couple of fiddly tasks that seemed to involve me cutting and filling in some very tight spaces. All of which seemed to use exactly the same muscle groups as when pumping up a tyre at the side of the trail with a mini-pump. First was the seat clamp slot, which I decided to make extra difficult by having it facing forward. This makes it tough to cut without catching either the back of the seat tube or the top tube. Then I had to fill and file the breather holes, before Robin worked his magic with the tig welder on the aforementioned stay.
 
All of a sudden, time was starting to run away with us. I hadn’t even started to silver braze the numerous cable guides and bottle bosses, and we still needed to tap, ream and face the bottom bracket and the head tube (minus the tapping) as well as do the final alignment check. It was time to get my head down.
 
After a busy couple of hours, the frame was eventually finished around 7.30pm. Robin, Tom, Jake and Andrew had all stayed to help me through this final push and I felt that they were genuinely pleased to see the results of my efforts. With the bikes rear wheel and front end to hand I couldn’t help but loosely slot them into place. If it isn't obvious already, then I’ll just make it absolutely clear that I’m over-the-moon with the frame. 

Ecstatic with the final frame

Final Thoughts:

​I decided to go on the course for two primary reasons. First to learn how to make a bicycle frame, with the dream that one day I might start making a few more. And secondly, to build a frame that would allow me to put my theories on frame geometry to the test. While I can say with confidence that I feel like I have achieved the first, only after some time, a lick of paint and a few evenings with the allen keys will I be in a position to test the latter.
 
But the last word must go to The Bicycle Academy. If you have even the slightest inkling that you might want to make a frame, then just do it. It’s a fantastic experience. Once you’ve made this decision, I would suggest that, for those in the UK at least, The Bicycle Academy should be top of your list. The level of thought that has gone into what and how the process is taught, combined with fantastic facilities is, to my knowledge, simply unparalleled. But what makes this course really stand out is the calibre of those teaching it.
 
Andrew Denham is one of the most principled people that I have ever met, whose sole mission with the Bicycle Academy is to enable more people to get into frame building. This may sound overly gushing, but the proof is in what he has created. For this, he is most definitely to be applauded. While the rest of the teaching staff – Tom, Robin and Jake – manage to mix that rarest of combinations: complete mastery of their subject and the ability to convey their knowledge to a desk jockey such as me in a compelling and effective way.
 
A massive thank you to The Bicycle Academy.