This article is part of a series I’m writing about my experience taking a bicycle framebuilding class with master frame builder, Doug Fattic.
Little bit cold out here
I woke up before dawn this morning ready to get started. Since we don’t meet for class until 9 AM and I hadn’t exercised since Thankgiving, I got up and went for a run around Niles. It was quiet and snowing on my run and much of the town is quite charming in a rust belt way. The older part is along the river with surronding hills. There is a hiking trail along the river and a compact downtown with a shop filled main street. Unfortunately, the other direction from the Fattic family home is a busy, sidewalkless highway full of strip malls and fast food drive throughs. This is where we have to walk to get groceries and is not charming at all.
It proceeded to snow heavily the rest of the day, and this Texas boy was cold! What should I expect in December in Michigan, right?
Robert gets fitted on the fitting bike.
Upon returning and getting ready, the three of us headed over to Doug’s workshop to begin. Doug was still sick but decided to push through so there would be no more delays. We spent the morning learning about the history of custom frame builders in America and discussing bicycle fit. I have to say the question of fit makes me quite nervous. Custom bike building is extremely labor intensive, and I don’t want spend all this time making an unridable bike. Still, I’ve decided to build a Dutch style city bike which I’ve been assured that I can’t get into too much trouble with.
In the afternoon we did a fit session with Robert and designed his bike with a fixture Doug designed. I understand the basic concepts of frame geometry, however in practice it was hard for me to follow why Doug was doing each step.
Doug begins designing Robert's bike on his frame fixture.
After this, we finally got to get started on parts of our bikes. We began with inspection of our tubes to mark them for easy assembly. Then, we mitered our seat tubes, first on an enormous machine called a Bridgestone then by hand with files. I really appreciate the machine as mitering by hand is very time consuming and not nearly as acturate in my novice hands.
I finished the day with my seat tube cut to fit in my bottom bracket. While this gives me some satifaction, I am feeling incredibly overwhelmed by everything I’m learning and not feeling I have a true grasp of everything. And we have yet to design out my bike making me worried about frame fit again. I’m going to just have faith that things will be clearer in the coming days. I don’t have much of a choice a this point.
Read the next post in the series, Day 2, There will be blood!.
Read the previous post in the series, The pain of waiting.
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on Dec 2nd, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Sweet! You’re in SW Michigan, not far from my parent’s home (and right in the middle of the lake effect snow). Good for you.
Can’t wait to hear more about your exploits from my desk here in Austin. I love custom builds, and I have three steel rigs to show for it.
Good luck!
on Dec 3rd, 2008 at 3:50 pm
I am not much of a custom builder but I suppose you will have doubts until the moment you finish your fourth or fifth frame :p
And even then you´ll probably still have much to learn – that´s the beautiful part of it
Have fun!
on Dec 22nd, 2008 at 1:46 pm
[...] Read the next post in the series, Day 1, Cold and overwhelmed. [...]
on Dec 22nd, 2008 at 1:55 pm
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