LBS that sell hand made steel frames?

^
It was a reference to Jeezs' personal experience of being nuts, not meant to be taken seriously.

try fitzrovia. they have a lot of 2nd hand steel and can do custom orders through woodrup

Surely if you want handbuilt British steel but want it already built the most elegant solution is to buy each second hand or a vintage frame?

Thx for the Fitzrovia suggestions, went there yesterday and didn't have any 2nd hand frames in my size. The Woodrup wait list was 5 months, might as well wait for Mercian.

Surely if you want handbuilt British steel but want it already built the most elegant solution is to buy each second hand or a vintage frame?

I would love to find a second hand or vintage frame - been looking for a while. Can't seem to find one anywhere on the forums or on eBay. If you know of one like a King of Mercia in a 54cm I would love to buy it asap!

Don't Push Cycles sell OTP Mercian frames?

Yup!

http://pushcycles.myshopify.com/search?t=bike&q=mercian

Yup!

http://pushcycles.myshopify.com/search?t=bike&q=mercian

Nope, they said they do not do OTP Mercian, only Bespoke which seems odd to me. Surely Mercian would do OTP for people like me who don't want to wait 6 months.

I suspect that the vast majority of the hand-built frames you can find (that are not brought into the UK in a shipping container) will be built to order, why would (say) Mercian want to make a load of 64cm frames just in case a giant wanted an OTP frame in a hurry?

The commercial aspects of this simply don't add up for them.

^Not in such an extreme example, no - but I was under the impression that most builders (BJ, Mercian etc) had a standard/base geo (of their own design) that they worked from, and would occasionally produce small batches of framesets in popular sizes, ie not custom-fitted to any individual.
These types of framesets exist, surely?

I suspect that they'd be sold to the shop- vide the BLB custom Bob Jacksons.

Perfectly willing to be corrected here, but what percentage of the handbuilt steel frame market bases their decision on "must have it tonight"?

There's a difference between
"I fancy trying a beautiful handmade steel frameset, it could be perfect for me, but I'd like to get riding one ASAP to see if that's true"
and
"I definitely know I want a handmade steel frameset that fits me perfectly and I have a couple of other high-end steel bikes to ride in the meantime whilst the builder takes [insert vast time period here] to build it".
I'm in the former camp, myself. I have a handmade bicycle but it's aluminium not steel. To my knowledge, the company that made it have only ever made custom-fit framesets for their own race team.

This is an infuriating thread.

Get a second hand one. There's tons on ebay, often some on here. Then you'd be looking at bikes, rather than an infuriating thread. Which you started.

I've had a Coppi, a Basso, a 'nago*, and another Basso, all handmade, all steel, all wonderful to ride. Never took me more than a month or so to find them.

*for the money, least interesting ride of the lot.

There is a difference, yes, but it's a big commercial commitment to building a load of frames without a home to go to.

I'm involved with a framebuilders here in London, and a significant part of our offering is a range of bikes all with hand-built steel frames and hand-built wheels.

They are all built to order, and the big reason there is that a) we offer 1cm increments in geometry, and b) the colour choice is free, not to mention c) we simply can't afford to build a stack of frames an hope they all sell.

Have you called Mercian themselves yet:

although we do have a stock of ready built frames and bikes to call upon if required, so you don’t always have to wait for your new Mercian.

^thank you.

Not talking big quantities. This thread is already proof that there's a market for it.
Marketed well, I'd bet your builder could do, say, five framesets and have names on every one of them inside a fortnight.
It's a niche product, but the customer is keen, and short on time.

I appreciate where you are coming from, but what size do you put your money on?

I guess you could do one each of 53/54/55/56/57, but what are the odds on selling them all?

This is the sort of thing that a larger organisation that is better capitalised could take on- we're too small, as the cost of the frametubes and braze would be circa 2/3k.

Also, marketing (good marketing, that is) is not cheap.

We're trying to come up with stuff that gets into the blogs etc instead of paying for advertising.

EDIT to add- the costs for that are probably similar, but we get to make cool stuff rather than just paying Google/etc

It's a risk for a builder, granted - but I don't think there's ever been a better time to take it. Handmade steel bikes are so desirable right now, and your average Richard Sachs / Stanridge Instagram follower would KILL to have a frameset from them without the wait (and six to eight months of wondering whether they bought the wrong bike). Instant gratification is the reason Condor do so well with their stock offerings. They project the image of a historied, bespoke brand whilst stocking a reasonable range that sells mostly through word of mouth - if you ride a mate's Acciaio and love it, you can buy one practically the next day.
If you ride a friend's handmade custom steel bike and REALLY love it, the chances of you actually going through the fit, order and build process are far far lower.
English frame builders can't really put a foot wrong right now - they have a cash-rich, time-poor (and I dare say fickle) audience watching what they do for patient people like yourself (Dammit), and wondering if they could possibly have that thing tomorrow.
The ride characteristics that come from a custom fit are what they are, but there are plenty of us that will settle for 90% perfect if it means we can be rolling on fillet-brazed/lugged lightweight steel this summer.

What colour do you paint them?

I guess the question is, how quick is quick enough?

We'll make you a complete bike, from scratch, in 6-8 weeks after you pay your deposit.

That'll be taking frametubes from Reynolds and Columbus through to wrapping the bar tape, then cutting down the steerer after you've ridden it for 2-3 weeks after delivery.

What colour do you paint them?

If we were to do this we'd probably go for a limited edition paint job, with numbered frames.

You've already answered the marketing question yourself - use what's free first. Don't take a print ad out, you'll just get drowned out by the noise of electronic groupsets and carbon clinchers.
IG, Tumblr & Flickr will get you noticed far more easily, by the right crowd.

We are trying, a friend of mine has offered to start running the Twitter account - something I am no good at.

[SPAM WARNING]

You can have one of these, for £2,499, in 6-8 weeks from now, in any colour you want- is that fast enough?

[/SPAM]

Twitter - all mouth, no trousers. Make sure you have the visual stuff to back it up.

Sizemore did a bit of batch production (of sscx frames). Bob Jackson do regularly. I think they leave them unpainted until an order comes in.