Howard-
Realistically, I will need to train some. There is one chap I know who has the skills needed (George I'm looking at you) , but bicycle welding holds a few problems:
Very thin walled tubing. You would normally start life with much thicker stuff, and may only ever weld thick wall (more than 2mm) so hiring someone with TIG welding experience doesn't mean you can just chuck them at a pile of bikes. Combine horrible compound mitres (looking at you BB cluster) and dissimlar materials and wall thickness (stainless drop outs to ferrous stays, 1.6mm BB shell to 0.6mm seat tube and down tube) and there would probably be a lot of practice needed. Not saying there aren't people out there capable, obviously there are loads but this leads onto the next problem:
Money. A really good TIG welder can earn proper money. More than bike trade money.
The way I look at it is the difference between a car body shop and bicycle finishers. A body shop could be really good at painting cars, but give them a bike and they'll make a mess of it. Conversely bike finishers can't necessarily paint cars. Anyone who has seen the mess that is my Volvo can attest to this.
I am going to be doing the welding, or at least some of it for a little while. But already we have employed people for mitring, cutting, emails and half the paint, and plan to continue with this.
You are reading a single comment by @Howard and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
deleted
Talbot will be where I whet my whistle building silly things in a cost inefficent way. In the near future I don't intend to do any Isen 'muck work'. As you say, you dont't get rich by doing work yourself, but by getting other people to do it for you. However, you don't have to outsource it, if anything that just adds another layer of profit skimming. We want to be a UK manufacturing business, no "Designed in the UK" big union jack bullshit. There is no reason why this is financially unviable, especially at the units we are selling, and it will only become more sensible the further down the shitter the UK economy plunges.