I’ve been home a few weeks now and more time to reflect on Doug’s class and frame building. In the first post in the series I said I was not sure if I’d build more than one bike. I’ve answered that question with a resounding yes. While at times frustrating and certainly difficult I really enjoyed the frame building process. I’ve had a few friends ask about building them bikes, and I’ve decided that there are a few more bikes that I’d like for myself, so I at least have a road map in front of me as far as what to build. Since I’ve been home I’ve started collecting tools and I’m not too far from having what I need to build. Making the jump to full time professional isn’t something I’m considering at this time.
Overall Doug’s class was great, I really enjoyed my time there. It felt a lot like being back in college. Long days, powered by caffeine and moments of fun inside long days of work. Thankfully I took in more information much faster than when I was in college, something about older and wiser I guess. We all went home with unfinished bikes. It took me a long time to figure out that the class was less about the bike I was building then, and more about the bikes I’ll be building later. This bike is just the first of many. Now that I have the bike finished I’m quite happy with it, much happier than when I left class. When I think back on my frustrations during class there were two major sources. One of them could have been avoided all together with a bit more thought before class.
The first big frustration was the bi-laminate thing and how long it took us to figure out that we should just drop it. Better planning before class would have fixed this. I could have a. made sure the lugs I had would work for the application I had in mind, b. ordered them sooner so we had them in time (or since Ceeway was out of stock order something else). I think that it would have been far better, from a frustration perspective to never have attempted the bi-laminate. That said I learned a lot about how to do it before we ditched the project. I am very happy to have gone through the process. On the other hand if we had just gone with a fillet brazed bike I’d have come home with a completed bike. I brought the head tube home that we started on for the bi-laminate project. So I have that to finish for another bike. I think I’ll wait until I have a jig to do that though. Since all I had to do was file when I got home I’m happy with the way it worked out.
My other frustration was the rear end, specifically chain stay attachment. Two of us had troubles getting things to line up properly post brazing and it was because we didn’t know (or retain) the process about how to maintain alignment during brazing. I am not sure why this happened, but it was something we both learned after the fact how to fix. In a way I’m grateful for this as we are much less likely to forget the correct process now. On the other hand we both spent a lot of time figuring out our problems. One upside of this is that we had quite the liveley dinner conversation one night about how to create a jig to do away with the problems we had. In both cases we had chain stays slide into the the bottom bracket during brazing, causing the rear end to be just slightly out of alignment. In both cases we fixed the issue and ended up with aligned frames, it just took a lot of work.
As far as the instructor, Doug is a fantastic teacher. He spends quite a bit of time figuring out how a student learns things, and does his best to adapt his teaching methods to that particular student. I saw this quite a bit in our class when I would look at how Doug explained things to me, vs. how Doug would explain the same thing to Clifford. I do wonder how much I frustrated Doug as I tend to learn things through repetition and explanation, rather than demonstration. If I did frustrate him he hid it well. Another thing that I really appreciated is that Doug is a true craftsman. He cares very much about the quality of his work, and that of his students. With Doug I didn’t feel like there was a lot of “thats good enough” in order to hurry us along. We did not cut corners. Everything was done, and done correctly. Sometimes we resorted to using different fixtures to speed the process along, but we never sacrificed quality for time.I really appreciated this.
Other observations and things I’ve realized since I’ve been home. Doug has every tool in the universe. This makes prioritizing purchases to build a shop at home a bit of a challenge. The first purchases are pretty obvious; alignment table, torch setup, files. What comes after that is still a bit of a mystery. I’m working on the table and torch setup now. I’ve got files and most of the general hand tools covered as well as a work bench and vise. After I get the torch and table worked out I think I’ll be picking up things like lug vises (the next bike is going to be a lugged single speed). After that I’ll start to think about one of Doug’s fixtures and maybe a small mill. I’ve had a lot of contact with my classmates and Doug to help with this process. I think all three of us are well on our way to having some type of shop setup.
I’m quite happy with the experience, I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
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