6 Day Frame Building Course at Downland Cycles

So I've been wanting to build my own frame for quite a while but just never had the time or money to put it into practice. Currently ride a Surly Steamroller for commuting and a Crosscheck for long rides and touring. So I've been saving up and with the added bonus of getting a small pay rise in work things seemed to fall into place this year. I was searching around a number of the different framebuilding workshops and it so happened that Downland fitted for location, price and availability of a course when I was able to do it. Also someone I used to work with has just completed a 6 day course with them and had thoroughly enjoyed it so I put my deposit down and started on bike cad.

Bike Cad was a slow process to get to grips with everything and reading through various framebuilding books to understand what I wanted or would have the capability of building. Discussing a frame with Bryan at Downland Cycles I knew I wanted a CX/Gravel bike with a carbon fork. I got the basic design done on Bike Cad and then sent it off to Bryan. Discussion back and forth and also a number of measurements that needed to be checked on the first day.

In the meantime I managed to get a pair of brand new Hope Pro 4 hubs on ebay when they had a 20% sale and took them to SBC Cycles to be built. They had a pair of Halo Vapour rims which had been powder coated black which was perfect to go with my orange hubs. Amazing service by the guys at SBC Cycles and the wheels were ready in a few days.

Day 1 of arriving at Downland. Quick tour of the workshop and it was straight into finalising designs for the bikes. It was me and two other people on the course, one building a track bike and the other a hardtail mountain bike. After a number of measurements and checking against the set up on my current bikes, the design was completed. CX/Gravel bike with ability to take 40c tyres in the future. From there we then moved to picking out tubes. Bryan had just got a delivery of Reynolds 853 tubes which immediately got my attention. With riding my Surly's all the time they aren't exactly the lightest so I thought this was an opportunity to get something lighter although that wasn't the driving factor for my build. We checked all the measurements on Bike Cad and picked out the most suitable tubes for the main triangle. I also chose a 44mm headtube. We then used Bike Cad and Dogfeather (I think that's what it was called) to print out our templates for mitring our tubes. After a demonstration from Bryan we were off to practice on our little pieces of tubing. Once practice was done we then turned to the Jig. There were three of these in the workshop two of which were built in Bristol. Setting these up to the measurements we had developed in Bike Cad took some time ensuring that all angles and distances were correct.

Once we felt confident with our measurements, mitring the practices tubes and had a tea break it was time to start with our own tubes with Bryan there at all times keeping a close eye.

Having never done any metal work before it took me quite a while to get used to the tubes and mitring them to fit around each other. You have to become good friends with the files!

For the rest of day one and day two we spent mitring the tubes and checking they fit together, checking lengths, angles fit on the jig. When starting off it's a slow process measuring, having to put the tube in the vice, file, take it out, put it on the jig, check if it fits and repeat all over again quite a lot of times!

By the end of day two we had the main triangle all measured up and fitting in the jig. This also included me having to put an oval at one end of my top tube in a vice to make it fit around the smaller seattube

Day three was a break from filing which was badly needed at this point and it was time to start fillet brazing. We spent the morning practicing on various pieces of flat metal and then progressed to brazing tubes to flat metal and then onto brazing tubes to each other. There was no rush with this and Bryan was more than happy to let us practice as long as we felt we needed.

In the afternoon it was then time to tack and braze our own frames and this is when my nerves kicked in! All fine doing it on practice tubing but when it's your own bike it's a different story! I found the tacking of the frame to be the most difficult for me for some reason. This was done in the jig and left to cool and time for another tea break. Once cooled we then put the tacked frames into a workstand and got ready for fillet brazing the full frame. I chose to fillet braze my frame instead of lugs because the tube sizes that I wanted it wasn't going to be possible. By dinner time we had fully brazed front triangles which felt like a great achievement. Once we had dinner, the filing once again started.

Day 4 started with more filing and this continued for a while. We then started picking out the tubes for the rear triangle. As I wanted large tyre clearance it I had to keep checking my selection of tubes to ensure that they would clear the 40c tyre. The rest of the day was then spent measuring, cutting, mitring and checking fit at all times in the jig. Once ready we then tacked and brazed the rear drops out the drive stays. Once this was cooled and alignment was checked we then tacked the drive stays

Then more filing proceeded for the rest of the evening

Day 5 the plan was to finish the rear triangle and any braze ons for the frame. The start was of the day was meant to be brazing the drive stays but on checking my alignment and chainset clearance I could see I had put one of my drive stays out too far but thankfully it was only tacked so not too difficult to fix. Once this was sorted we then brazed on the drive stays. We then measured up the seat stays and decided whether or not we wanted to use Topeyes or mitre the tubes around the seat tube. I decided on Topeyes partially for looks and partially for the less mitring they involved!

By the evening of day 5 I then had a fully brazed frame including a brace I put near the rear brake and a bridge. These we both surprisingly easy in the grand scheme of things to mitre and braze.

The filing continued long into the night then.

Day 6 was then the day to get everything else finished! I needed to braze on the cable stops which was done with silver which heats up and flows alot quicker than brass done so it's a very quick process. Silver is also a lot more expensive so only very little is needed on these. We then continued with filing and then we reamed and faced the headtube, seattube and bottom bracket.

Once all of this was done we continued with the filing and sanding as much as we could. I found around the bottom bracket the most difficult for obvious reasons as it has more tubes. I could help but do a quick mock up with my fork and wheels in the workshop to see how everything looked

Pic of the three frames that were made on the course

Managed to leave the workshop about 4 and head back to London in the hope of beating rush hour. It was a great course and a great experience. Bryan was very knowledgable and on hand at all times with any queries or help that we may need. I would definitely recommend the course to anyone who is interested in building their own frame. Having met some of the people who have done the course at Bespoked the best expression I heard from someone on their third build was that it was like tattoos, once you get one you want to keep getting more. I would definitely love to build more frames but would really like to find a welding course in London to do so I can improve before the next frame. Hopefully I can find one over the summer to do and my plan is to then build another frame at the end of the summer.

My frame is currently waiting in the hallway to be dropped off to Armourtex in the morning to be powdercoated. Will post some more pics once the build begins. So far I've got Hope Pro 4 wheels, Shimano 105 groupset, Chris King Headset

Also if anyone knows of any welding/brazing courses in London that would be greatly appreciated and also any workshops that I could use for building frames for myself.

Thanks for this. Very inspiring read!

Really cool read; makes me want to built a frame.

Any ideas about the paint?

Cheers.

Colour so far I'm thinking of the frame being a blue/grey then have a hope orange seat clamp to match the hubs and then try either paint some orange lines on the frame or use some vinyl of a similar colour. Possibly use the same vinyl or something like this for the inside of the fork then removing the white stickers on there at the moment. This could all change when I go to armourtex and see the range of colours!!

Thinking of getting some brass to try make a head badge then

This makes me want to do a course like this even more. Thanks for sharing!

Nice.

From looking through their Instagram it appears a chap is making some nice frames at building bloqs, shared workshop up by Edmonton.

http://www.buildingbloqs.com
https://www.instagram.com/p/BDOKcXhIk1Q/

Thanks will have a look at that.

For welding courses, there is a college in Hammersmith that does an evening course.

For workshop space, look at Blackhorse Workshops.

Welcome to the LFGSS Frame Building Club!

Love these frame building threads. Particularly interested in yours due to brazing not lugging, want to build my own at some point but don't want to use lugs. Good read. Look forward to seeing further progress.

Thanks will definitely look into those

Orange inside the forks is a great look! (I might be slightly biased ...)

Completely forgot to put a progress update on this. Have been riding it as follows with some parts bin parts but haven't finished as saving some money to change some pieces around at the minute and I also want to add some orange/black graphics to the frame and fork.

Plan is to get black seatpost, new saddle and then go 1x11 with a mixture of Sram Force and Apex and run a nw chainring on the shimano cranks for the moment to keep it cheaper.