Geoff Roberts Framebuilding course - first and second, and third frames. And fourth (now finished). And fifth.

Longshot: Are you the actual stevevw? Off ddk etc recently with a yellow 356?

Time for a belated updated. Given that since we finished the course, I've had a week at home coughing my lungs up followed by a long weekend in Tuscany, I'm a bit behind, but I'll start off with the final stages of @Cycliste's bike.

After brazing the front triangle together, some magical pixies (Sam and Geoff) shotblasted it so she could move onto doing the stays. When I was at Enigma in February, Josh and I would normally be hard at work at 8.30am, but @Cycliste and I were running to a more relaxed timetable. We'd aim to be there for 9, but generally we'd still be finishing off our first cup of tea at 9.30. The magical pixies did their work while we were having breakfast (at the Snug on the High Street in Hailsham - recommended).

I can't give much of a commentary of @Cycliste doing the rear triangle on her frame since I was busy doing my own frame at the time, but I did take a moment to take a photo of her brazing the brake bridge into place.

Due to @Cycliste's pocket-sized dimensions, some novel techniques had to be adopted to get her hands high enough to braze the brake bridge. Despite appearances, it's not actually just a cardboard box she's standing on. It's a cardboard box full of hardback books, so was actually quite sturdy.

After finishing the rear triangle on the Thursday, @Cycliste's frame was nearly finished, with just the water bottle bosses and some finishing work left to do.

A little filing and shotblasting later, and her frame was done. The rear wheel is the wheel she'll be using for this build (it's a 650C Velocity Deep V rim on an On-One track hub) as is the carbon fork. Because it's 650C I think it looks a lot better proportioned than some of @Cycliste's other bikes.

Geoff seemed rather pleased with it too. He's almost smiling in that photo. Maybe he was just looking forward to seeing us leave.

Anyway, @Cycliste's frame is done, bar painting. On the drive back to the Fens we had many lengthy discussions about colour schemes, but the current plan is light blue with white decals. It's going to have silver finishing kit and white trimmings (saddle, bar tape, brake hoods), and I think it'd look rather good with white lugs too, but apparently @Cycliste is unconvinced by my white lugs plan. Not that I mind - I'll be doing the painting, and if I don't have to mask the lugs off then it's less work for me. Still reckon it'd look good though.

Right, latest updates on my frame in another post.

In the first photo, Geoff appears to be "snotting" a down-tube whilst using his laser-eyes to project the top-tube at his diminutive student.

Fearsome Ninja trousers.

Those are the sort of awesome skills you need in order to become a master frame builder. Extruding tubesets through your orifices. It's something I aspire to.

That jig is a sputnik I believe, rather than an Anvil. I don't think the pair of them get on.....

Yep, I think you're right. I still wouldn't say no to one.

They're lovely. I know a few people with both (I have an anvil) and the only thing that swung me for the journeyman was access, that massive backplate on the sputnik makes getting round the back almost impossible, fine for tacking, but if youre relying on the back purge and wanting to TIG a lot of it in the fixture, the journeyman makes it easier.

Right, another very late and rather historical update.

In my last post on my build, I'd brazed the front triangle together, tacked the chain stays in position and had cut the tubes for the wishbone seat stays:

Geoff had wondered why I was using Zona tubing for the seat stays, and rustled up a pair of Spirit stays to use, but as I anticipated the Spirit stays wouldn't work - they're a slightly bigger diameter than the Zona stays, so the wishbone wouldn't fit. The tricky thing about the wishbone seat stays was trying to keep everything lined up. The wishbone can go out of alignment, both side to side and twisting, so I ended up getting everything lined up, putting a tack in, the tack would pull things out of line, I'd get everything lined up again, put in another tack, that would pull things out of line, so I'd get everything aligned again, and repeat ad nauseam until it was all tacked together and reasonably rigid.

Geoff was mostly leaving me to my own devices while helping @Cycliste with her frame, but it was at this point that he pointed out I'd made a couple of boo-boos. First, I'd forgotten to drill a breather hold in the seat tube where the top part of the wishbone seat stay connected. We got round this by me drilling a small hole in the upper part of the seat stay and then once it was all brazed together brazing the end of a nail into the hole and filing it flat. The other boo-boo was that I'd forgotten to drill out the brake mounting holes on the wishbone. The outer one isn't an issue - that's easy to do with the seat stays in position, but there's precious little space to get a drill at the rear hole. Fortunately, it turns out that there's just enough space to get an air-powered right angle drill with a cut-down drill bit in there. Another job I haven't actually got round to doing yet.

In the evening we went for a bike ride, and I took Brommer Bike #1 for a spin. The loop I'd come up with featured the coast road from Bexhill to Pevensey, so I thought a quick pick of Brommers Bike #1 at the seaside was called for. If you look carefully you can just make out Beachy Head in the background.

I'm happy to say that Brommers Bike #1 rides really rather nicely, although the standard chainset and 12-25 cassette means that some of the hills were pretty stiff work. I remembered (rather belatedly) that when I did the course in February I found some of the hills a bit steep with that gearing. Funnily enough they hadn't got any less steep in the meantime.

After brazing the rear triangle together I did the bottom bracket cluster, which seemed to take forever due to the large number of tubes all meeting at the bottom bracket. After that, I did the internal cable run for the rear brake, and added the binder for the seat post bolt and the bottle cage bosses, which meant I was left with this:

The picture on the wall is from Geoff and was intended as inspiration.

Since then, I've been doing lots and lots and lots of filing. This is what the fillet brazing on the heat tube looked like raw after I'd shot-blasted it:

Not too bad, though I say it myself, albeit a bit lumpy in places. This is the top of the seat tube, after I'd made a start on the filing and polishing. There are a few pinholes, most of which aren't too bad, but there are a few (including the one at the top of the seat tube/top tube junction which you can just see in the photo) which I'm going to fill with silver braze.

Filing the bottom bracket cluster is proving to be a major PITA, as expected. This is after I'd roughed it out using a variety of power tools, but before the final polish:

One trick I have learnt is that the best way to do the final polish is to get a length of inch wide emery cloth, but a suitably sized thumb or finger on the back of it, and then pull it through on the bit you want to sand. It removes a decent amount of material without the rough finish you get from sanding drums on a Dremel or carbide tooling. Still takes forever, but I'm being rather cautious at this stage.

Right, back to filing and polishing...

Oh, and I think I've persuaded @Cycliste that I should be allowed to give the white lugs plan a try. Here's hoping she likes it.

That BB area looks like a real PITA. Is that part of the reason why old frame makers used lugs, to save labour costs - especially in the pre-Dremel era.

Lugs do in some ways make building a frame easier, particularly if you're using a hearth rather than a gas torch, although there are also other reasons for using lugs. I'm not sure less filing was the main reason for using them though.

Less filing? That now sounds like an excellent idea. Nothing I've done in the last 2 months on the frame has been particularly photogenic but what I have done is:

1. Filing
   
2. Tapped and faced the bottom bracket
   
3. More filing
   
4. Reamed the seatpost
   
5. Even more filing
   
6. Stamped the BB shell with the frame number
   
7. For fuck's sake, not more filing
   
8. Filled in one ding (poor centre punch technique) and one huge pinhole (poor fillet brazing technique) with silver and filed them flat
   
9. And a bit more filing
   
10. Sanded down the 3T Rigida LTD fork that's going on the bike ready for painting
    
11. God I hate filing
    
    

Net result, in the spray booth, just ready for paint, looked like this:

I've done the primer, and that's been curing overnight. Once the paint had gone on, it was clear the fillets weren't quite as lusciously smooth as I'd hoped. Maybe I should've done more filing.

Anyway, I've now prepared the vinyl masks for the painting, so it's time to go and shoot some base coat, colour coat and clear.

I've just noticed I never posted any pictures of Brommers Bike #1 in its completed state other than the picture of it on the beach. So here it is, with some more of my terrible phone camera photos:

Spec is as follows:

Columbus Hiver fork
Zipp SC finishing kit
Campag Centaur groupset but with Grand Cru brake calipers and a Fulcrum crankset
Powertap 32 spoke wheels
Fizik Arione reflective saddle and Elite Ciussi bottle cages

Since I took the photos it's grown some mudguards (SKS Longboards) to get it ready for its intended role as a winter bike too, and I've also replaced the NDS bearing on the Powertap hub as it was getting a bit graunchy.

And a quick update on Brommers Bike #2. I spent most of yesterday afternoon and evening and night at the spray booth doing the paint on the frame and forks. First off, 3 coats of black base coat:

Then 3 coats of the colour coat, followed by 4 coats of clear coat. Given that it's necessary to wait at least 10 minutes between each coat, and at least an hour between different paint layers (base/colour/clear) it took just over 6 hours in total. At the moment the frame and forks are in the spray booth being gently warmed by 1kW of halogen lighting, so that hopefully the paint will be fully cured by tomorrow morning. Here's a teaser shot of the colour coat, before I shot the clear over it.

fucking awesome work

#sprayboothenvy

That looks incredible!

Cheers! Hoping to take the new bike to Mallorca next week. Major stumbling block at the moment is the absence of the wheels for this bike.

It is rather nice, albeit rather messy - I definitely need to tidy it up and hoover up the worst of the spider webs. It's reasonably well appointed - 6 double flourescent lamps, 150 litre 3hp compressor for the gun, 50 litre 1hp compressor for the air mask, and huge panel filter and fan for extraction which is strong enough to pull the doors shut.

The only real problem is it's about half an hour's drive from my house. And the fact that one of the people I sublet part of the unit to has taken to putting large sections of bodywork from his race car right in front of the spray booth doors. I may have to Have Words about that.

yes that looks very, very promising!

Amazing paint!

Is it flip-flop or just the camera/lighting?

Might be flip paint. Might very well be...

Brommers Bike #2 is now finished and busy being ridden around Mallorca. The build process was, as usual, a last minute and panicky affair. I didn't finish painting the frame until the night of the Sunday before we were due to leave, and as mentioned above I left the frame and fork baking in front of two sets of Halogen lights to let the paint harden.

I started the build in earnest on the Wednesday. Usual things - fit the headset, fit the stem, mark the fork steerer height, chop down the fork steerer, make a bung to fit inside it and bond that into place rather than an expanding bung. Then bottom bracket, chainset, seat post and saddle.

The wheels didn't arrive until Wednesday, considerably later than I'd planned and considerably later than they were supposed to arrive. They're Mack hubs laced to Kinlin XR31T rims with CX-Ray spokes. I planned to run them tubeless with 25mm Schwalbe Pro One tubeless tyres. The tyres were a bugger to fit, and the rear tyre was an even bigger bugger to remove when I realised that I'd fitted it the wrong way round - cue much swearing. However, they pumped up nice and easily with just a track pump, and I added some sealant so they were good to go.

It was only after all of this that I discovered that 25mm Schwalbe Pro One tyres on Kinlin XR31T hubs won't fit underneath a 3T Rigida LTD fork. By this stage it was Friday evening, and I still hadn't finished building the bike, so I had to hot foot it over to the local bike shop and get a pair of Schwalbe 23mm tyres, sadly not tubeless so I'm running with inner tubes.

The rest of the build was reasonably straightforward. The only major issue was the fact that, with hindsight, I should've made the chainstays shorter and fitted the wishbone on the rear stays a little bit higher. I can't get the rear wheel all the way forwards in the track ends without the tyre fouling on the bottom of the wishbone. As a result, I've had to use a half link in the chain, to avoid having to have the wheel right at the rear of the track ends, and there's rather more of a gap between the rear wheel and the seat tube than I would've liked. I'm not one of these waffer-thin-clearance fetishists, but a gap of something more in the region of 10mm rather than 25mm would be better.

Still, it's all part of the learning process. I've ridden the bike for the last four days, and very shortly I'll post some proper pictures of it. In the meantime, here's another teaser...

I'm glad you've ironed out the wrinkles before taking my order!

PayPal address plz.

Delivery in 2027? Maybe. Can't guarantee it...