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Thanks for that! I also spoke to my mate who thinks I was getting a bit a head of myself with my designs and ideas haha.. But I'm hearing nothing but positive stuff about frame building - and I can see myself really catching the bug for this as many others have seemed to! So yeah I think I need to enjoy the course and learn what I can. Thanks
JamesKJ
Hi,
I've did the Downland course about 4 years ago. They are a really nice group of people, and the workshop is well appointed.
I have subsequently done other frame-building courses, and regularly ride around on a bike I built myself, which is a great feeling.
There are really four main aspects to frame-building; design, cutting tubes to close tolerances, brazing the tubes together and alignment.
For your first build, I would suggest you stick to a very simple, lugged design. You also want to use a tubeset that is fairly tolerant, like say Columbus Spirit.
Really, you've got 5 days or so, so you want to learn as much as you can about cutting tubes to size (the better you can do that, the better the results), and brazing tubes together - which means learning about heat control and brass-flow.
If you can cut the tubes, and braze them - you will know the basics of frame building. Learning about design and alignment can come later. If it's your first time, I would forget about fillet brazing or anything over complicated.
Most of all, enjoy the course. I loved it.