How I got into frame building

[commuter ebikes]

Long story short, I ordered four custom frames from Lance Portnoff of Design Logic. He is an amazing guy! His enthusiasm rubbed off on me, and we are both ridiculous about making everything as nice as it can be. I wanted to do what he did.

Also, the bike school that I go to (UBI) has four frame building classes. I took all of the mechanic's classes, and I love the school so I wanted to go take more classes.

Finally, I needed a frame repaired about a year ago after I violently tore open the dropouts because I was stupidly riding my bike around while the torque plates were at the powder coater. The local frame builder, Jeremy Sycip, did not respond to my email requesting help for six days. Maybe he was on vacation, or maybe I am impatient. I did find a partially paralyzed elderly framebuilder 70 miles away who charged me $180 for 60 minutes of work. I want to be able to repair these things at home.

Plus I just like to goof around in the garage.

[commuter ebikes]

Here is his TIG repair:

[commuter ebikes]

He decided to permanently weld on the derailleur hanger. If those female threads ever strip, it will require another dropout installation. The new bike only had about 50 miles on it before the cracked dropouts, so the damage required me to completely strip the new bike, wait 3 months for a $250 powder coating and then reassemble the bike, with torque plates this time!

Here it is after powder coating.

[commuter ebikes]

Here is a 220V Miller Dynasty 210 DX with CPS, Coolmate 1.3, wireless foot pedal, Q size argon cylinder with Victor dual flowmeter/regulator on a Miller Small Runner cart.

[Felix D'Kat]

Hi Commuter ebikes, I'm getting into Frame making for some of your reasons but mostly I want a sturdy ebike that actually fits me correctly, I'm tall and lanky and I just cant get comfortable on anything I have tried, also I thought I may give frame repairs a go as well as there is no-one within hundreds of klm of where I live that does it but there are a lot of bikes in the area

Also It will be fun and a new challenge for me, I get bored with my job easily, I'm way on the wrong side of 50 now and it will be something nice to do as I get older

Have fun with it

Cheers
FDC

..

[commuter ebikes]

Hi Commuter ebikes, I'm getting into Frame making for some of your reasons but mostly I want a sturdy ebike that actually fits me correctly, I'm tall and lanky and I just cant get comfortable on anything I have tried, also I thought I may give frame repairs a go as well as there is no-one within hundreds of klm of where I live that does it but there are a lot of bikes in the area

Also It will be fun and a new challenge for me, I get bored with my job easily, I'm way on the wrong side of 50 now and it will be something nice to do as I get older

Have fun with it

Cheers
FDC

..

I'm in my 50s, too.

I was surprised how many TIG welding, welding safety, metalworking, frame building, etc. videos are on YouTube. I have been binge watching these for months and I am still only at the tip of the iceberg.

Keep us posted here on your progress.

[commuter ebikes]

Here are some pictures of the first frame that I built. It is 100% 4130 Chromoly steel, sized for me, and brazed with brass. These pictures were taken after I filed and sanded for about 16 hours. It is now going to the powder coater.

I added eight extra braze-ons (saddles) for routing two multiconductor cables along the top tube. I also brazed on four extra bolt bosses (mounting holes) for mounting a luggage rack.

This frame fits a Vee Snowshoe 2XL (31.5" X 5.05" wide) tire and a 70T chain ring.

It has double butted tubes for the chain stays, seat stays, top tube, down tube and seat tube. It has the following Paragon parts: 100mm BB, vertical dropouts with integrated ISO mounting tabs, and a whopping 190mm X 48mm head tube.

[commuter ebikes]

Here is a view of the 192mm dropouts:

[commuter ebikes]

Here is a photo of the size fitting for the tire, chain ring and torque plates. You can see all of the excess brass that I spent 16 hours filing and sanding off.