A new Retro 'Classic' in the making....

Hello all,

Not sure if anyone's interested but I'm currently doing a frame-building course at Downland Cycles near Canterbury - at the end of 11 days of tuition I should have gained the knowledge and experience to build custom steel frames using traditional techniques. I'll also have a home-made Reynolds 631 frame and forks built by me, to my own spec and dimensions to paint and build up :-D

I'm blogging the experience here: http://srframebuilding.blogspot.co.uk/

I've paid special attention to details so the whole thing's being fillet brazed (it'll be the only non-lugged bike I own) with wrap-around seat stays and classic road dropouts. The only lugs in the whole thing are the fork crown and also the seat clamp that I'm going to make out of a bit of over-sized tube....

Hope you enjoy!

I would love to do that I will only have the time when I retire so I'll be 68

Shaun

Midlife":1n0gq3l0 said:

I would love to do that

Click to expand...

+1

It must be a great feeling to ride around on a bike completely built by yourself.

Love the photo of the 'big' file! With that in your hand anyone would look like a midget

Cheers for the replies, chaps!

Robbied196":1wt7nbj8 said:

Midlife":1wt7nbj8 said:

I would love to do that

Click to expand...

It must be a great feeling to ride around on a bike completely built by yourself.

Click to expand...

I can sympathise, Shaun - it was a case of now or never!

Robbie: I'll let you know - it'll be a leap of faith the first time I swing my leg over a frame that I've hand brazed...

Speaking of which, the tubes are now all mitred, and I spent yesterday making my own seat clamp by filing and drilling a bit of appropriately sized sleeve. I spent today learning how to fillet braze and it looks like I may well be tacking my frame together tomorrow or Sunday.

Exciting times!

great. i really like those fancy, intricate head tube sleeves that some builders do and of coarse head tube badges look good . i have a bioracer print out done about 1993 and ive always dreamt of bringing it to life.
tell me friend , how do you get perfect alignment of all the tubes and forks ? that is a centre line in plan.

oonaff":2l5z9lyv said:

great. i really like those fancy, intricate head tube sleeves that some builders do and of coarse head tube badges look good . i have a bioracer print out done about 1993 and ive always dreamt of bringing it to life.
tell me friend , how do you get perfect alignment of all the tubes and forks ? that is a centre line in plan.

Click to expand...

Hi there,

Yeah, it's nice to have the freedom to make things as ornate as possible - I've kept it simple on my first frame but later ones will be more complicated I'd think, especially since I'll be using lugs on a few of them. I did make one concession and made a slightly decorative lug for the seat tube/top tube joint so that I didn't have to use a heavy lug for the seat clamp.

Give me a shout when you want your bioracer frame made - I'll be setting myself up to do a bit of frame building in the next little while ;-)

Getting alignment correct is pretty simple - mark centrelines on all your tubes, cut the mitres central to those lines and then set it all up in a jig to get everything lined up. The jig has a static boss for the bottom bracket lug/tube and then the bosses for the seat and head tube are adjustable for angle but only in one plane - they always keep in line with the bottom bracket.



Then the only thing that can go wrong is if the tubes move when you braze/weld them together, but there are clamps to prevent that from happening...

Good to see you have a fire extinguisher at the ready however during actual welding you should have a firewatch as standby.

Nob":1km3723d said:

Good to see you have a fire extinguisher at the ready however during actual welding you should have a firewatch as standby.

Click to expand...

Ha - thankfully there were no fires today, and even better, no holes through any Reynolds tubing which shouldn't be there!

I tacked and then fillet brazed the tubes together this morning and the brazed my seatpost sleeve on this afternoon. Tomorrow we're setting up the rear triangle and carrying on with the immense amount of filing that needs to be completed!

Tacked together:



The Seat tube to top tube joint brazed and filed down:

Coming along

Do you get to paint it as well?

Just out of curiosity, there's a hole in the brazing. Does that get filled in with more brass?

Cheers


Shaun

augh i see that makes perfect sense, the verticle line in relation to head tube and seat tube are identicle. top tube and down tube simply connect.[then how come ribble had far less appraisals than cannondale ? ha lol ]
I must say that jig looks a nifty bit of tool making, functional not too expensive but an absolute must of course the finer the tolerances with that baby, the better the frame ! forks are prob straight forward when you know how.eh! tell me, is this an all out business venture ? or part time venture ?
be cheaper if you could hire or share tooling or jigs or premises and a good paint sprayer[but not a neccesity}
I see on ebay there are drop out /lug/ crown kits available, wish i had the time,
As you can file and butt joint, 853 must be on your mind or even titanium. the bioracer diagram i have has heaps of info on it .even the h bar stem 11.5 & cranks 172.5 are given. pm me when you are ready!
auh ha messege from confushus he say man who builds frame must also build jig .Otherwise eternaly
ribbled