New/amateur/garage/kitchen framebuilding discussion

flickr is good for inspiration

I'm a member of that Hackspace and I have some of the tools, skills, and experience you seek. Ask away!

Right, I think it’s time I fashion something sort of jig. I’ve fired the Ideas2cycles folk a message to see if they still have any of the cone sets that @PhilDAS got so who wants to share photos of their home brew jigs?

I have made myself a fork jig that I think I can use to do the bb > rear dropout bit quite easily so probably just need to add some bits to the front of this.

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Any recommendations for a TIG-Machine?
Im a total noob at this. Never done it before...

I learnt that I need a Pedal and a light hose / small torch for the application of frame building...
Pulse and Pre/Post-Flow as well of course. DC would be enough.

Somebody have a recommendation for a affordable set? // What are you guys using?
(available in Europe/Germany)

Thanks!

Not sure if they ship to Germany, but i and a few others here have had good/excellent experiences with Rtech welding.

mine is the same extrusion as the ideas to cycles people but different design.

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I think that’s heavier duty stuff than I’ve used for my jigs so far.

I’ve ordered some stuff this morning actually, a 1m section of 2080 to form the base, I’ll reuse the 750mm bit of 2060 from my fork jig to hold the seattube, bought another bit of 2060 to hold the headtube and I’ve bought some chunks of ali bar to (try to) turn my own cones for head and seat tubes.

I’m going to use some blocks of ali to make pivots for the upright sections.

It’ll all be fairly light stuff, I’m hoping that doesn’t mean it’s too flimsy.

Even if it doesn’t work out I have only spent about £60-70 at the moment and I’ll be able to use it all for some other jig or something I’m sure.

a lot of people go for Rtech if going new. I went with the most high end old(ish) set up I could get in my budget. I would rather spend out on quality personally than buy lower quality new stuff with warranties etc

it's served me really well, had for years now and faultless, 200 amp ac/dc water cooled with foot pedal etc, cost around £800 I think. don't think I could have got anything close for the money that would have lasted if bought new

Loads of info here

http://bicyclemanufacturing.co.uk/?page_id=615

https://www.flickr.com/photos/151761966@N05/

http://bicyclemanufacturing.co.uk/?page_id=670

https://www.instagram.com/bicyclemanufacturing/?hl=en

Silver or brass for lugged fork crowns?

I’m torn between brass as (I imagine) it would be stronger but I’d have to get everything hotter and/or it might not penetrate as well as silver.

Thank you! I`ll give it a look.
Im with you regarding buying quality-used rather than cheap new trash...

Got all the machining done for (this iteration of) my jig, still waiting on some nuts and bolts coming in the mail but the jist of it is there.

750mm section wasn’t long enough for the uprights. Think I’ll get away with it on the headtube as I’m not going to use a top and bottom mount for the headtube, just a lower and I’ve extended the seattube one with the bit of extrusion that was my stem jig.

Wasn’t sure the 1m piece I’ve used as a base was going to cut it either but it just does. Might alter the design to have a piece coming up at 90deg for a while then put the tilt for the headtube angle further up, that’d get me another couple cm of length.

I wanted to turn cones for the head and seattubes but the compound cross-slide on my dad’s lathe is horrible to use so just went with a stepped design. These pucks could be a lot smaller but 100mm is generally the shortest length of round bar you can buy on eBay, I have no powered means of cutting ali bar so it’d be a toil with the hacksaw and I may turn the pieces into cones in the future if I figure out a way of driving the compound with a drill or something.

Going with the stepped design rather than cones means there’s no real need to hold the headtube from above as well as below and forgoing the upper mount means I can mount long bits of headtube in the jig. I like to keep as much length on the headtube for as long in the build as possible as I find the longer tube can be eyeballed against the seattube much easier than a shorter length when I’m checking alignment.

I’ll turn the bit of bar I bought to make the upper cone down to make a puck for a 1” headtube and if I need to make pucks for other headtube sizes it’ll be half the job!

Other than the pucks the only bits I had to machine were the bits of square ali bar that the upright bolt/hinge to.

I bought 100mm of 1 ½” square bar, hacksawed it in half, chucked it up in the 4 jaw and squared the ends. Then I drilled an 8mm hole for the pivot bolt and 4x 5mm holes to mount it to the base extrusion. As much as I’d tried to align these holes correctly for the channels in the extrusion and to keep the edge of the block flush with the edge of the base I got it wrong and had to widen the holes out to 6mm to give myself some room for adjustment. Once they are nipped down they won’t be going anywhere.

Oh and I’d made the axle block a couple weeks ago for the fork jig. Similar to the blocks above, 10mm hole for the axle to go through, axle nuts hold it in place, then a couple 5mm holes to mount it to the extrusion.

All in I reckon I’ve spend around the £100 mark but that includes all the nuts and bolts and it’s only a matter of a undoing a few of those nuts and bolts to go from frame jig to fork jig to stem jig.

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Stainless stainless ho ho ho

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Love this. Are people here familiar with Phil Vandelay on YT? He made an alu cargo bike and doesn't appear to have heat treated it. Am very curious.

Heat treating is only needed for certain grades of aluminium. 7000 series generally is air hardened over about a month.

Your TIG welding is looking good btw. Stainless is well nice to weld.

Have a go with some old 531 tubing if you want to challenge yourself

Heat treating is only needed for certain grades of aluminium. 7000 series generally is air hardened over about a month.

Now that is interesting.

My instructor was showing me how to cheat by wedging the ceramic in the cleft and using it as a guide :D Not all those little welds are done using that method tho.

What the heck do I need to hook up a CK torch (3/8" bsp) to this guy? It has quick release type gas fitting, I think

Will this work? https://www.r-techwelding.co.uk/tig-torch-dinse-adaptor-3-8bsp-quick-release/

God it’s so much easier doing chainstays with a jig!

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theres a fun thread on mtbr where people are starting to pile in on pvd.

Having browsed there every so often for the last while, i definitely get the impression pvd is a bit (a lot) of a tosser...but he knows his shite that's for sure.

https://forums.mtbr.com/frame-building/tube-sizing-180mm-freeride-bike-1119277.html

Someone asked something along the lines of ‘Which oxy-fuel torch should I buy for fillet and lug brazing?’ On the Facebook framebuilder group the other day and his answer was ‘Get a tig setup’. Get in the fucking sea!

Yeah i saw that, he really doesnt do himself any favours. He just seems like a super grumpy guy. I dont know what the deal is. His website is sometimes useful but jesus he just needs to lighten up a bit

The only time I’ve tried to use his site was because I was told he had good info on the dimensions for disc brake mounts. I found his drawings but there was so much extraneous information on them I couldn’t make head nor tail of them.

Well I've only gone and done it. Tube set from Ceeway arrived yesterday. Time to get everything prepped and start the first frame. Have you guys ever thought about a little Discord/FB/Whatsapp chat for the LFGSS hobbyists? Mostly because I've got about a thousand real noobie questions.

Ask em here. That’s why I started the thread.