A girl, a bike, and a fantasy frame building camp

[William]

Yamaguchi Frame Building Fantasy Camp

I was in the market for a bicycle. I had looked in all the shops and gone on several test rides, but even the high-end frames felt lifeless to me. At that time I was on an aluminum bike and didn’t like the feel. Carbon seemed too sterile. With its cycling legacy behind it, I knew I wanted steel.

But not just any piece of cold steel between my legs would do. I wanted something sexy, with a good personality and depth. I had been searching for the bicycle frame that would stimulate a series of tingling goose bumps at the mere sight of it. I wanted something that fit like a glove; was made for my body. I wanted my bicycle to start out with a good story, and we all know every good story starts in Rifle, Colorado.

Master frame builder Koichi Yamaguchi offers a two-week bicycle frame-building course, you can build either a steel lugged or fillet brazed frame. In this course you are taught the basics of old school steel frame building. Yamaguchi was head builder for 3 Rencho in Japan using nothing more than a jig, handsaw and a few files. These are the techniques that he passes down in his classes........

http://girlbikelove.com/2012/01/yamaguchi-frame-building-fantasy-camp/




Great experience, except for the sad note at the end. Some day baby, some day!:cool:








William

[FlashUNC]

Yamaguchi's class is on my bucket list...

[David Kirk]

Fun stuff.

dave

[druptight]

If you don't have the scratch for the class, do it in your basement! I'm 2 bikes in, and I have no bike to build this winter, sadly. It's so much fun and so rewarding to ride a bike you built yourself. I recently sold my CAAD 9, so my only 2 bikes now are the ones I built. Cost of entry really is surprisingly low if you build jigless. Couple hundred bucks in tooling and couple hundred bucks in tubes and silver and you're on your way.

[Climb01742]

Fun stuff.

dave

hey dave,

this may be a hard question to quantify an answer to, but may i fire away anyway? malcolm gladwell famously said that it takes 10,000 hours of doing a skill/craft/thing before someone gets really good at it.

was there a moment or time during your frame building career when you felt, ok, now i'm good at this? not as good as i will be, and yes, i still have lots to get better at...but now i can truly say, i'm a frame builder? and how long into your career was that moment?

asking myself that same question, i'd say it took me about 10 years to consistently be able to do my job at a high level, day in, day out. at 5 years, i could hit the high notes_most_days, but there were still enough days i struck out. so maybe 8-10 before my hits far outnumbered my misses...and i knew enough to know i'd missed, and why, and how to make it right.

what was your experience as a builder? thanks.

[4Rings6Stars]

Cool story, thanks for posting it.


If you don't have the scratch for the class, do it in your basement! I'm 2 bikes in, and I have no bike to build this winter, sadly. It's so much fun and so rewarding to ride a bike you built yourself. I recently sold my CAAD 9, so my only 2 bikes now are the ones I built. Cost of entry really is surprisingly low if you build jigless. Couple hundred bucks in tooling and couple hundred bucks in tubes and silver and you're on your way.

That's awesome, I might have to bug and/or bribe you to let me come by and watch/practice some day...

I got really fired up about starting to hobby build steel frames a few years ago and spent countless hours reading blogs, forums, framebuilding manuals, etc. I sourced an old tubeset and bought an old Oxy Acet set up...then started grad school and got a grown up job. I never did actually make it to touching the torch to metal. The main reason is that the torch is stored at my parents' house (1+ hour west) and I don't have any where to use or store it in my apartment in the city. In the spring I am moving to the burbs and will have a large basement, so I plan on getting back into it then.

[David Kirk]

hey dave,

this may be a hard question to quantify an answer to, but may i fire away anyway? malcolm gladwell famously said that it takes 10,000 hours of doing a skill/craft/thing before someone gets really good at it.

was there a moment or time during your frame building career when you felt, ok, now i'm good at this? not as good as i will be, and yes, i still have lots to get better at...but now i can truly say, i'm a frame builder? and how long into your career was that moment?

asking myself that same question, i'd say it took me about 10 years to consistently be able to do my job at a high level, day in, day out. at 5 years, i could hit the high notes_most_days, but there were still enough days i struck out. so maybe 8-10 before my hits far outnumbered my misses...and i knew enough to know i'd missed, and why, and how to make it right.

what was your experience as a builder? thanks.



Hey Climb-mon,

You ask an interesting question. I think the tough part is that you only have your current and past as perspective and have no idea how good you may become and how good it’s even possible to become. In other words you ‘don’t know what you don’t know’.

When I first started I was like anyone starting something new – I didn’t understand what ‘good’ was and therefore had a hard time telling the difference between the work I was doing and ‘good’ work. The good thing in my case was that I worked in an environment that didn’t suffer fools and let me think I was doing better work than I really was. Serotta was fast paced, competitive and super critical – it was like a Tuesday night club ride in a way………there was nothing on the line for ‘winning’ but it was still important to try. This setting either produced world class builders or frustrated guys who felt they were being passed over for the more interesting/difficult tasks. The thing is that the frustrated guys couldn’t see the difference when comparing their work to others – they thought their work was just as good or better.

A few years into my Serotta tenure I started to feel like I was doing truly good work and that I even had advice to share with others on how to do a higher level of work. I thought of myself as a framebuilder at this point and wrongly thought that I was nearing the flatter part of the learning curve.

Co-incidentally at about this time an old friend with deep pockets offered to back me financially to start my own gig. I was really tempted but dragged my heels and in the end thought better of it and stayed put. Somewhere deep inside I knew there was still too much that I still didn’t know and that this would make it very tough to make a go of it on my own.

At this point in my building career I’d begun the transition from being a general shop floor guy to being the custom builder. As a shop floor guy you learn most, or all, of the skills needed to produce a bike but you rarely, if ever, put all those skills to the test on a single bike. Instead you do a given operation on bike after bike after bike and at some point you switch it up and change operations. I say this because I’m often asked ‘how many bikes doesn’t it take to be good’ and I don’t know as I rarely worked on one bike start to finish. I can say that I did finish work on hundreds of bikes, alignment on 100’s, brazing on 100’s…..you get the idea. So I had worked on hundreds/thousands of bikes but rarely built one start to finish where I could say, “I built that!” It’s interesting to note that I, and a few others at Serotta, brazed/aligned/machined more bikes in a year than most one man shops will build in a lifetime and yet never really built one bike start to finish.

When I moved into the ‘custom guy’ role I built the frames start to finish one at a time, much the same way I do now interestingly. It was in this role, with the countless bikes in my past, that I felt like I’d really begun to learn the art of framebuilding and design. As an aside…………I studied martial arts very seriously at this time and was in the dojo 3-5 days a week minimum and worked out everyday. I eventually I got my black belt and my sensei sat me down and told me that the black belt wasn’t the end of learning but instead just the beginning. This is how I felt about framebuilding at this point. I’d been working as a full time builder 40 hours a week for about 5 years and it just then felt like I now had enough background to really learn. More to your question – I felt at this point that I was good at it and that I was indeed a full-fledged builder in my own right. Doing the math just now I see that 5 years @ 40 hours a week comes to 10,000 hours – who knew? I never did that math before. Interesting.

I hit my 10,000 hour mark about 20 years ago (damn I’m getting old!) and it’s with this as a background I have to admit that when I see a new builder hang their shingle after 6, 8, or 10 bikes I have to smile. I can see that they are excited and feeling empowered just as I was after being at Serotta for a few months. Occasionally I dismay at the thought of this new builder not seeing how their work differs from top shelf work. They can’t see the difference so come to the easy conclusion that their work is just as good and ready to be sold. This can be really obvious when you see photos posted of very immature work that any experienced builder would hide under the bench. The new guy can’t see the difference – he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know……….and only long hours at the bench will give them the perspective.

It would be wrong for me to say that no one could do top shelf work faster than I did – frankly I’m not that fast a learner. But I feel pretty certain that no one makes top shelf stuff in weeks or months but that any way you cut it it takes years. As many years as I’ve spent? Maybe not.

It’s interesting stuff to think about and a good way to spend some time this morning while the shop warms up. It’s up to -1° outside right now on its way to a forecast high of 4°. I’d better get to work while it’s still light.

Thanks for the question and even more for reading my lengthy answer.

dave

[ColonelJLloyd]

^ Thanks for posting that!

[druptight]

Dave - thanks for posting that awesome response. It's always enlightening to hear the path one took to get to where they are today. As I was reading it, I was thinking how much it must suck to be on finishing duty if the guy doing the brazing doesn't leave clean shorelines - especially if you think you could have.


That's awesome, I might have to bug and/or bribe you to let me come by and watch/practice some day...

I got really fired up about starting to hobby build steel frames a few years ago and spent countless hours reading blogs, forums, framebuilding manuals, etc. I sourced an old tubeset and bought an old Oxy Acet set up...then started grad school and got a grown up job. I never did actually make it to touching the torch to metal. The main reason is that the torch is stored at my parents' house (1+ hour west) and I don't have any where to use or store it in my apartment in the city. In the spring I am moving to the burbs and will have a large basement, so I plan on getting back into it then.

You're ahead of me if you have an O/A rig. I used MAPP gas for my first 2. If I ever get to a point where I can commit the time/money to doing a bike or two a year, I'll definitely get an O/A rig. The burbs and having a basement is what did it for me too. I found it to be a fantastic winter project the last 2 years. I'd work on weekends and the occasional weeknight, couple hours at a time and cranked each one out so that I could paint it once it got warm enough to paint. Did fairly intricate rattle can jobs on them both initially as I don't want to outlay the cash for a pro paintjob until I'm sure they'll hold up. Thankfully I've got 2 seasons on the first one and 1 on the other with no signs of fatigue/failure yet. I can ride them straight with no hands, so it's straight enough. You should also keep in touch with Ebaumann too, I know he's working on putting together/already has most of what he needs to get going himself.

[David Kirk]

You bring up a good point. We did have trouble with that at times and the way we really cured it was to take the guy doing the questionable work and let him to the follow up on his own work. In the case you site we'd have the guy doing the brazing do finish work on a few of his own and the quality of the brazing would rise in a big way. If you don't see what the next guy in the line sees it's hard to correct your shortcomings. This helped in a few ways - the first and most obvious was that the work got better and took less time..........the second and possibly more important way was that the guy doing the finish work now felt understood. It was acknowledged that he was having rough work put in front of him and that efforts were being made to make his life easier. This goes a very long way to making a room full of rough young men be nice to one another - and that in turn makes the work they are doing better. Win-win.

Dave


Dave - thanks for posting that awesome response. It's always enlightening to hear the path one took to get to where they are today. As I was reading it, I was thinking how much it must suck to be on finishing duty if the guy doing the brazing doesn't leave clean shorelines - especially if you think you could have.



.............................

[jmoore]

You bring up a good point. We did have trouble with that at times and the way we really cured it was to take the guy doing the questionable work and let him to the follow up on his own work. In the case you site we'd have the guy doing the brazing do finish work on a few of his own and the quality of the brazing would rise in a big way. If you don't see what the next guy in the line sees it's hard to correct your shortcomings. This helped in a few ways - the first and most obvious was that the work got better and took less time..........the second and possibly more important way was that the guy doing the finish work now felt understood. It was acknowledged that he was having rough work put in front of him and that efforts were being made to make his life easier. This goes a very long way to making a room full of rough young men be nice to one another - and that in turn makes the work they are doing better. Win-win.

Dave

This is some very interesting insight into teamwork in a manufacturing environment. And it makes total sense.

It reminds me of when my wife and I were on vacation in Ireland several years ago. We drove down to Waterford to tour the crystal factory. During the tour you got to see a piece being built from start to finish. It was handed off through several people who all touched it in some way or another. At the end, the inspector said that if a piece was rejected, then everyone who touched it didn't get credit for it and they were all essentially paid by the piece. Someone asked why that was fair, and the tour guide wouldn't answer. They essentially said "that's the way we do things here." It never really dawned on my until now that this was the reason. Increased quality and speed.

And it will make me reflect on my own work as i continue to work on my tiny little saddle business.

And Dave, as always, thanks for your thoughtful posts.

[David Kirk]

Interesting.

By empowering the average guy on the line to stop the flow at any time you make sure that substandard work won't make it very far. It gives both power and motivation to the line guy to make sure that bad work stops in it's tracks..........and by doing that the company makes more profit. A good company will of course share that profit so that it comes full circle and not have it just be a punitive policy.

At one point Serotta did a very good job of this and if the hours of rework were down the bonuses went up. Pretty good incentive for the guys to make sure when the bike leaves their bench that it's the best it can be.

Thanks for the comments.

dave






This is some very interesting insight into teamwork in a manufacturing environment. And it makes total sense.

It reminds me of when my wife and I were on vacation in Ireland several years ago. We drove down to Waterford to tour the crystal factory. During the tour you got to see a piece being built from start to finish. It was handed off through several people who all touched it in some way or another. At the end, the inspector said that if a piece was rejected, then everyone who touched it didn't get credit for it and they were all essentially paid by the piece. Someone asked why that was fair, and the tour guide wouldn't answer. They essentially said "that's the way we do things here." It never really dawned on my until now that this was the reason. Increased quality and speed.

And it will make me reflect on my own work as i continue to work on my tiny little saddle business.

And Dave, as always, thanks for your thoughtful posts.

[Climb01742]

Hey Climb-mon,

You ask an interesting question. I think the tough part is that you only have your current and past as perspective and have no idea how good you may become and how good it’s even possible to become. In other words you ‘don’t know what you don’t know’.

When I first started I was like anyone starting something new – I didn’t understand what ‘good’ was and therefore had a hard time telling the difference between the work I was doing and ‘good’ work. The good thing in my case was that I worked in an environment that didn’t suffer fools and let me think I was doing better work than I really was. Serotta was fast paced, competitive and super critical – it was like a Tuesday night club ride in a way………there was nothing on the line for ‘winning’ but it was still important to try. This setting either produced world class builders or frustrated guys who felt they were being passed over for the more interesting/difficult tasks. The thing is that the frustrated guys couldn’t see the difference when comparing their work to others – they thought their work was just as good or better.

A few years into my Serotta tenure I started to feel like I was doing truly good work and that I even had advice to share with others on how to do a higher level of work. I thought of myself as a framebuilder at this point and wrongly thought that I was nearing the flatter part of the learning curve.

Co-incidentally at about this time an old friend with deep pockets offered to back me financially to start my own gig. I was really tempted but dragged my heels and in the end thought better of it and stayed put. Somewhere deep inside I knew there was still too much that I still didn’t know and that this would make it very tough to make a go of it on my own.

At this point in my building career I’d begun the transition from being a general shop floor guy to being the custom builder. As a shop floor guy you learn most, or all, of the skills needed to produce a bike but you rarely, if ever, put all those skills to the test on a single bike. Instead you do a given operation on bike after bike after bike and at some point you switch it up and change operations. I say this because I’m often asked ‘how many bikes doesn’t it take to be good’ and I don’t know as I rarely worked on one bike start to finish. I can say that I did finish work on hundreds of bikes, alignment on 100’s, brazing on 100’s…..you get the idea. So I had worked on hundreds/thousands of bikes but rarely built one start to finish where I could say, “I built that!” It’s interesting to note that I, and a few others at Serotta, brazed/aligned/machined more bikes in a year than most one man shops will build in a lifetime and yet never really built one bike start to finish.

When I moved into the ‘custom guy’ role I built the frames start to finish one at a time, much the same way I do now interestingly. It was in this role, with the countless bikes in my past, that I felt like I’d really begun to learn the art of framebuilding and design. As an aside…………I studied martial arts very seriously at this time and was in the dojo 3-5 days a week minimum and worked out everyday. I eventually I got my black belt and my sensei sat me down and told me that the black belt wasn’t the end of learning but instead just the beginning. This is how I felt about framebuilding at this point. I’d been working as a full time builder 40 hours a week for about 5 years and it just then felt like I now had enough background to really learn. More to your question – I felt at this point that I was good at it and that I was indeed a full-fledged builder in my own right. Doing the math just now I see that 5 years @ 40 hours a week comes to 10,000 hours – who knew? I never did that math before. Interesting.

I hit my 10,000 hour mark about 20 years ago (damn I’m getting old!) and it’s with this as a background I have to admit that when I see a new builder hang their shingle after 6, 8, or 10 bikes I have to smile. I can see that they are excited and feeling empowered just as I was after being at Serotta for a few months. Occasionally I dismay at the thought of this new builder not seeing how their work differs from top shelf work. They can’t see the difference so come to the easy conclusion that their work is just as good and ready to be sold. This can be really obvious when you see photos posted of very immature work that any experienced builder would hide under the bench. The new guy can’t see the difference – he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know……….and only long hours at the bench will give them the perspective.

It would be wrong for me to say that no one could do top shelf work faster than I did – frankly I’m not that fast a learner. But I feel pretty certain that no one makes top shelf stuff in weeks or months but that any way you cut it it takes years. As many years as I’ve spent? Maybe not.

It’s interesting stuff to think about and a good way to spend some time this morning while the shop warms up. It’s up to -1° outside right now on its way to a forecast high of 4°. I’d better get to work while it’s still light.

Thanks for the question and even more for reading my lengthy answer.

dave

dave,

most excellent reply. reading your posts is always a pleasure and an education.

you raised two points in particular about how we learn our craft that really resonated with me and my experience.

1. we benefit from our work being seen, scrutinized, and commented on by others. it often isn't pleasant to face a critique but it puts what we do in a greater context, gives us a yardstick. we see every day how our work stacks up. for some, it demoralizes. for others, it hurts but then motivates. part of the weeding out process, maybe?

2. as a counterpart to that public vetting of our work, we can really benefit from having a mentor, whether someone or a group of folks helping us understand where we fell short and how to do better. speaking personally, looking back, i think i learned more from the people who patiently and step by step helped me dissect my failures, see where i went astray, see what i got right, and helped me see the way home. when you're young and learning, seeing the way forward can be so hard. you may have the drive to improve and work your ass off, but unless someone wiser helps us see where to put those efforts, our drive can go nowhere. being a mentor can be both a slog and a joy. i'm so thankful i had a few of them with the patience for me.

and thank_you_ for a wonderfully thoughtful answer to my question.

james

[William]

I just wanted to thank all of you that contributed in this thread. It started off by sharing a great experience, and then expanded on that theme and delved into a deeper thought provoking pool. I love this place!:cool:





William