Has anyone tried making their own bike from scratch?

Hey Guys

I was just wondering if anyone had started out with the tubes and literally made a bike from scratch as i am taking a welding and metalwork course over the next 16 weeks fom early Jan and i am going to try and buy some really nice steel and Alu and make my own couple of bikes. My course asks for us to set a project that will encompass all of the course elements and with access to a very well equiped couple of workshops it just had to be a bike or two. This will include the fabrication of the frame and will also mean making something from solid billet blocks using a CAD helper so maybe a stem or something that is not too intricate!

I am so excited but wanted to find out if anyone had done anything similar and if they had any tips??

I will post progress if it turns out any good!!

My good friend did this... :shock:

Home made carbon frame and saddle, titanium bar.

A worthy past time.

even the most well equiped school/collage workshop is unlikly to have the required bike jig to get every thing nice and strait, and welding thin tubes is not easy, I have tried in the past, and my welding is somewhat Agricultural and best left to fixing gates.

have a look at the Groovy Cycles website and Blog for some interesting videos on frame building and I am guessing a lugged bike may be a better bet to start with rather than building a lugless frame. Show us the pics good and bad.

They did a feature on just this topic in Singletrack mag some months ago. They did a 'build your frame' course with Dave Yates I think.

I actually have a college workshop available to me with a laser cutter, but i am not allowed to use this, but someone can on my behalf but my partners dad is an engineer and he was the one that encouraged me to do this in the first place. He has some really fine british equiptment, jigs and all. I am very lucky but it doesnt mean i will be any good.

Thanks for the heads up greenrabbit, so sorry to hear about the job, thats awful. I hope you are getting by ok and something comes along soon.

Shamus, i think carbon and thermoplastics are going to be beyond me, i have only recently got used to cutting and bonding glass fibre for car purposes. Still i can dream!!!!

I think you'll need a frame jig, you can rig one up on optical breadboard. I would check the framebuilding forum at mtbr and http://www.frameforum.org/portal/index.php for more on homebuilt jigs, and framebuilding generally

If you want to weld rather than braze you are going to need lots of practice welding thin tubing. I suggest you try to find scrapped and broken frames which you can chop up and reweld. To get the mitreing right you will need a jig capable of holding the tubing i nthe right orientation while a pillar drill cuts it, or some half round files and a lot of patience. Laser cutter would be good for dropouts, i'm not sure if it will be suitable for mitreing tubes, although it is possible it is expense that underlies their lack of use rather than unsuitability.

I'd love to give it a go, i'm idly looking for a welding course at present although going to UBI or one of the other american courses would be great if I could afford it.

Shamus":1iraa0db said:

My good friend did this... :shock:

Home made carbon frame and saddle, titanium bar.

Click to expand...

I've seen some of his stuff on WW, (samu's kitchen?) absolutley outstanding work

It's the tooling that would be the stumbling block IMHO, the problem being that it would take far longer to manufacture the jigs and fixtures than to prepare and weld the frame tubes.
Actually, when you think of the number of separate operations there are (all of them requiring jigging to ensure correct alignment) a complete set of frame building tooling represents a considerable outlay both in time for design and construction, and financially (for materials). A project in its own right, in fact.

Plus you'd need BB taps - priced these up lately? (unless you buy in a ready threaded BB shell) , head tube reamer, seat tube reamer or sizing mandrel etc etc....

I'm not saying it can't be done (of course it can...) but all I'm saying (speaking as a toolmaker) is that you have to question whether the outlay (in all respects) for the tooling is viable for just one or two frames?

If you decide to proceed with the project then I do wish you luck - I'd be interested to hear how you get on.

Thanks for the heads up Andy R, i will be going ahead no question. The jig is an interesting point but one easily got round by my partners dad as he is looking into this for me but your point about the bb definately does require some further thought but i will definately follow up and do this. I think it will be so exciting to do and the professionals had to start somewhere and i will be no different.

Welding small tubes i agree is very fiddly and having welded my car i know i need further work on this but that said i have plenty of material to prctice with and practice will make almost perfect.

I love this site, there are so many knowlegable people on here, it never ceases to suprise me.

Hey pace have done the jigging the easy way for years.
You cant beat them square tubes and a flat bench!