Your latest bike project?

[KLizotte]

Hey, I’m only 5’2″. The Kona Queso would probably fit me just fine!

[hozn]

Reviewing first-draft of frame drawing over lunch. This could be pretty awesome.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]12065[/ATTACH]

[dkel]

I swear if you start building your own frames from scratch now I’m going to lose it. :rolleyes:

[hozn]

@dkel 142630 wrote:

I swear if you start building your own frames from scratch now I’m going to lose it. :rolleyes:

I had the epiphany today that I want to take a frame-building class. Maybe that’ll be what I do in my midlife crisis. (But no, this is Waltly Titanium: http://www.waltlytitanium.com/)

[Harry Meatmotor]

@hozn 142619 wrote:

Reviewing first-draft of frame drawing over lunch. This could be pretty awesome.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]12065[/ATTACH]

Ti?

I vote for running a T47 BB. it’ll make the NAHBS-dorks drool. I betcha Paragon could whip up a shell in Ti, no sweat, then send it off to china.

Who’s welding this?

[hozn]

@Harry Meatmotor 142633 wrote:

Ti?

I vote for running a T47 BB. it’ll make the NAHBS-dorks drool. I betcha Paragon could whip up a shell in Ti, no sweat, then send it off to china.

Who’s welding this?

This is Waltly. They’ve been around for awhile; their works seems to generally be good. And they can accommodate 142×12 dropouts, flat-mount discs, internal routing, etc. Of course, they’re fabricators more than engineers, so if I spec something rubbish it’ll be rubbish. But I’m not really expecting off-the-shelf-level of quality here (or I should probably say “premium-grade” ti quality, since these guys do make ti frames for a number of smaller brands — possibly some larger ones too, I guess). Having broken 2 ti frames, I have every expectation this will break. But hopefully not for a few years.

I dunno about your BB recommendation I haven’t gotten the impression that this is really being embraced by the industry — and BSA isn’t really limiting my options in any way (and has always been rock solid for me). T47 sounded cool when it was first announced.

[dkel]

@hozn 142632 wrote:

I had the epiphany today that I want to take a frame-building class. Maybe that’ll be what I do in my midlife crisis.

This would be awesome (the class, not the crisis). Have you done welding before? By the way, if you want to do your midlife crisis right, wait till you have learned how to do all this stuff, then make your crisis the moment you chuck your job and start a custom bike-building business. You’d get lots of customers around here; heck, I’d get that Ti commuting rig I should get if I had you to figure out exactly what I need.

[hozn]

@dkel 142641 wrote:

This would be awesome (the class, not the crisis). Have you done welding before? By the way, if you want to do your midlife crisis right, wait till you have learned how to do all this stuff, then make your crisis the moment you chuck your job and start a custom bike-building business. You’d get lots of customers around here; heck, I’d get that Ti commuting rig I should get if I had you to figure out exactly what I need.

Ha, yeah. No, I haven’t welded before; I imagine that would be a good place to start . Realistically, I don’t know that I would ever want to fabricate frames (for others), but I would like to understand what the process looks like up close. And someday build myself a frame. Maybe a unicycle frame to keep it simple

[mstone]

A unicycle doesn’t have a frame, it has a post

[Vicegrip]

@hozn 142646 wrote:

Ha, yeah. No, I haven’t welded before; I imagine that would be a good place to start . Realistically, I don’t know that I would ever want to fabricate frames (for others), but I would like to understand what the process looks like up close. And someday build myself a frame. Maybe a unicycle frame to keep it simple

Having experience welding Ti as well as a list of other metals I can assure you Ti is not the place to start your career in welding.

Should you want to dabble in some steel I can walk you through the methods on some scrap. IMO the proper order or learning for steel is brazing, Mig and then Tig. Fabrication is not as hard as you might think once you have the methods for cutting, forming and connecting the metal bits together in hand.

[hozn]

@Vicegrip 142662 wrote:

Having experience welding Ti as well as a list of other metals I can assure you Ti is not the place to start your career in welding.

Should you want to dabble in some steel I can walk you through the methods on some scrap. IMO the proper order or learning for steel is brazing, Mig and then Tig. Fabrication is not as hard as you might think once you have the methods for cutting, forming and connecting the metal bits together in hand.

I would love to take you up on that sometime. Hopefully I can repay all this help with some wheel builds or something!

[chris_s]

@hozn 142646 wrote:

Ha, yeah. No, I haven’t welded before; I imagine that would be a good place to start . Realistically, I don’t know that I would ever want to fabricate frames (for others), but I would like to understand what the process looks like up close. And someday build myself a frame. Maybe a unicycle frame to keep it simple

Tech Shop in Crystal City has welding classes.

[hozn]

@chris_s 142670 wrote:

Tech Shop in Crystal City has welding classes.

Thanks for the tip. I thought Arl Co continuing education used to have welding classes, but I couldn’t find that when I [briefly] looked. I also didn’t see listed the auto repair class (cheap lift time!) I used to take.

[Harry Meatmotor]

@chris_s 142670 wrote:

Tech Shop in Crystal City has expensive welding classes.

FTFY.

I haven’t followed up, but they did say at the open house that they were considering purchasing and/or machining a frame fixture and offering a build-a-bike class or set of classes.

Honestly, tho, getting good enough at TIG welding just plain old chromoly steel to finish weld a bike frame takes a lot of seat time – likely a lot more time than the welding class/Tech shop membership costs would make much sense. if it were my money, I’d look at going to UBI for a week or two. You could also tack a frameset and get it finish welded by a pro, too.

[chris_s]

@Harry Meatmotor 142680 wrote:

FTFY.

I haven’t followed up, but they did say at the open house that they were considering purchasing and/or machining a frame fixture and offering a build-a-bike class or set of classes.

Honestly, tho, getting good enough at TIG welding just plain old chromoly steel to finish weld a bike frame takes a lot of seat time – likely a lot more time than the welding class/Tech shop membership costs would make much sense. if it were my money, I’d look at going to UBI for a week or two. You could also tack a frameset and get it finish welded by a pro, too.

2 Weeks at UBI: Aluminum Frame Building ($1100) or Titanium Frame Building ($3500)

1 month of TechShop membership ($150) + 2 or 3 welding classes (~$250): $400 total

You get a lot more instruction with the UBI course, but let’s put “expensive” in perspective.

[Author]

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