It goes without saying that this year has thrown a lot of plans to the wayside, not the least of them included my original plans to take a frame building course. My work schedule blew up with COVID-related requests and the week I had been targeting for vacation was moved, so I started researching other, closer-to-home options. I came across
Bing Bicycles via an
old Thrillist article. Richmond is close enough that I didn’t have to fly and rent a car, so I reached out and set a date: last full week of May. A well-deserved 5 days of vacation.
I knew already that I didn’t have time to learn how to TIG properly and put a bike together in the week I planned to take leave, so I decided to go the lug-brazed approach. I figured I could learn how to torch quicker so it would be the ideal means of completing the project. The tubing is all Columbus: Spirit for the front triangle, double tapered SL seatstays, and Zona chainstays.
The man behind Bing Bicycles is Rob Gassie. I arrived in Richmond Sunday evening and met up with Rob to plan out the week. That night we covered basic safety procedures, how to light and handle an oxy-acetylene torch, and how to apply heat to the tubing. All that covered, I checked into bed early. We got started bright and early Monday morning, laying out the life-size drawing of the frame on a large sheet of paper. The geometry for this build was based on a fit calculator and my other two bikes. With those measurements plotted out, we started cutting the tubes, using the lugs and a sharpie as guides to shape the cuts. Most of the cutting was done with a Dremel cutting blade—his reasoning behind this method is that most people can access Dremels, cordless drills, files, and hacksaws easily and cheaply compared to using miter jigs and more specialized/expensive equipment; when a student goes home to build on their own, it makes for a more comparable experience.
Tuesday was spent filling in the welds (which was an exercise in improving my ability to chase silver through the lugs and manage heat) and cleaning up the frame.
Wednesday was measuring, cutting, and fillet brazing the rear of the frame. Tricky stuff, but fun, making sure measurements were correct. I also managed to put together the fork on Wednesday, but I messed up the blade length (cut too short) and had to redo the job. I left myself a small margin of error given that I want to use standard Chorus brakes and 30mm tires, so perhaps there was some overthinking going on. Thursday and Friday were long days. Having to redo the fork took away a lot of time, and I was moving pretty slowly compared to Monday and Tuesday. Thursday was spent brazing small bits on and shaping up the brake bridge and the rear dropouts to ensure the larger tire and 11-speed cassette would fit. Turns out, fillet-brazing is one of those activities that I found myself getting a bit lost in the doing; nothing else matters while I’m focused on getting the heat evenly applied and getting the silver to flash and harden into the right shape/place. Friday was spent emory-clothing and polishing until the frame was all bright, shiny metal and ready for primer. I managed to get a coat of primer on before I had to call it a night and head back home to Arlington. Rob finished up the paint for me and I picked it up a couple weeks later. It’s sort of a medium gray with gloss clear, something plain that will show off the mistakes I made so I understand where to apply more effort in the future.
Here are some photos of the process. (Note that it took every bit of my 150lbs to bend those stinkin’ fork blades with the tool we used.) Some of these are no doubt going to be rotated as profile pics on my social media because torches are badass. Nothing in there worthy of a Friday Night Lights post, but hopefully they’re illustrative of the experience.
If you’re not too far away and are so inclined, I’d highly recommending taking this course. Rob is very patient and does a good job explaining what you’re doing and why you’re doing it in that order. I had full creative control over the design and aesthetics of the project, but he was keen to advise and guide me to reasonable expectations. He was a pleasure to work with and very reasonable on price. I recommend maintaining a positive attitude; you will mess up some part of the build, have to redo something, etc. Don't let it get you down because it can all be redone one way or another, just a matter of effort and time. I'm incredibly proud of my effort, even knowing it's nowhere near perfect, because I know how much work went into this thing. It was a fantastic learning experience.
I’ll post a reply next week once all my parts have arrived and it’s ride-ready. Fingers crossed that my work holds up.