I am a frame builder AMA

Excellent. Can I get this shit on amazon?

Next question, is brazing a disc tab likely to be strong enough or would it need tig or something?

(I'm not just going to buy a blow torch and try to put disc brakes on a frame)

Brazing would be fine. This splended effort from Kirk, for example:

I'd be tempted to use brass rather than silver though but that's mostly just superstition. A good brazed joint, whether with silver or brass, is stronger than the tube it's on.

And no, you can't get Fillet Pro or System 48 flux from Amazon - Ceeway is your friend there. Embrace the cutting edge early 1990s feel of the website and the lack of online ordering.

I’ve been on there before, was hoping it wouldn’t be necessary

Belt sander with interchangeable rollers

You can have my old copy of the lugged book if i can find it.]

Only caveat being don't do forks to start with. Fork failures are nasty, and especially don't do disc forks, as the loading forces are that much greater in some aspects.

I can’t put ikea furniture together, there’s no way I’d ride forks that I’d made.

But that would be much appreciated

What DIY methods can be used for checking frame alignment? I know of using strings from the headtube to the drop outs to check the rear triangle alignment and sighting from the front to check the headtube-seattube alignment. Any more?

What makes a good framebuilder/who do you admire most in the frame building game?

I had a tube notcher like Dan's and sold it as it was no use for fancy tubes, it was just easier to do it by hand before I bought a mill. Again as dan say, if you have space for a pillar drill you have space for a small mill. The foot print of my first mill is suprisingly small.

A long bit of steel with a bolt on the end. Rest the long bit of steel against the side of the head tube and the side of the seat tube, and adjust the bolt until it's just touching the inside of the rear dropout. Then transfer it to the other side and see what the clearance is (if any) between the end of the bolt and the inside face of the dropout. If it's the same, the frame is basically straight. Rather than a bolt you can have a pivoting swingy bit of stuff, but the principle is the same.

At one point I used the above mill for all my milling needs, although I've got 3 more now. That one can fit through a normal door without even taking the bed off.

The foot print of my first mill is suprisingly small.

Mine's even smaller. Mind you, it's a rather diddly little mill. Does everything I've asked of it so far though.

No milldo though, which lets it down.

#CSB Rob English had 8 floor standing pillar drills set up for tube notching duties at Bike friday which worked well. The issue is you can't really make accurate cuts quickly and easily without a traversing bed, so good for factories, not so much for one off stuff.

Looks lovely, and probably incredibly rigid.

And no milldo means no mill.

I want a Hurco 5 axis milling centre and matching CNC lathe, after that I've got what I want really. Although I really need to rebuild the Bridgeport. @moth needs to come and wire it up (multi-platform harrassment in full effect ;)

No waterjet cutter? Cutting plate with a milling machine is tedious and boring and wrong. Would've thought Karen would love a waterjet cutter for all her embellisments. Even if it is cheating if you're not doing them by hand.

What is your favourite tubing?
Have you ever worked with titanium / stainless steel or do you want to?
Sorry, dumb questions.

But how much more does a milldo mill than a mill that has do dildo?

It's purely a safety thing ;)

Nope, I am perfectly happy to send out for waterjet cutting. Cheap, simple and readily available. If it's in your workshop it's massive, messy, noisy and basic. I like show'ey stuff, waterjet is not it. She does send out for crowns, but most of her intricate nonsense is done by hand (only jealous as I can't do it)

Work with stainless all the time, preferably 953 if tubing, stainless jewellry (drop outs, bosses etc) supplied by PMW. Problem with stainless is it's much more moody about cleanliness than other things, and you needs back purging so ££££.

I have never seen the appeal in titanium, a lot of that is to do with working in bike shops for years and having to deal with cracked ti all the time, partly the ride characteristics that people like with ti is not my bag. It's incredibly moody to work with, and having seen how the weld with it in other saftey critical industries was enough for me to say 'fuck that I'm not touching it with a ten foot barge pole. I'm not saying that there isn't great builders working with ti, or that it is inherently bad, it's just I can't be fucked.