Building a frame for MADE

Building a frame 101:

This is by no means a step by step for you to follow. I likely have made an unlimited amount of missteps and mistakes. That being said. I did make a frame from the ground up and said frame is mostly straight and has not broken yet. For a first go, I would dare say that this project was a success. Maybe not in having a product that could be sold to anyone else, but certainly in learning a ton and getting the itch to build so many other things.

This story started a few months ago when my friend and business neighbor Andy randomly decided he was going to build a frame. He bought a jig from Benchmark Tooling and designed some stuff up in 2D. Andy has always been a guy who gets an idea and just makes it happen. I stopped by his workshop a couple times and was always so captivated. He finished the first frame, we went on a short "make sure the head tube doesn't fall off" ride and things were starting to get more and more real in my head. I was in, but didn't have the money to build an entire bike (I already have too many bikes). I listed my Merman Unholy Diver for sale and said "if it sells, I will send it". I had signed up for the MADE bike show in Portland by that time and what better way to get some publicity than by brazing up your own frame a week before the show. A couple days later, my Merman sold and I ordered all the parts and tubing. Here is a link to the spreadsheet I was working off of to build everything out.

LINK TO BIKE BUILD SPREADSHEET

I am not a CAD expert, but through designing and building hundreds of frame bags, art, and logo projects I have gotten a tiny bit better at Illustrator. Along with the geo numbers for the frame, I also had a pretty specific art direction I wanted to go in my head. I had recently lost my dog and had a pretty long term relationship end, this felt like a really good time to have a "tribute" project to put my time an energy into. After Aspen passed it felt like there were echos of her everywhere. I would walk home from work and instead of opening the door to a wagging ball of energy, I would walk into an empty space of silence. "From Ash and Echo" and "a love letter" were a bit of a tribute to her and to that time in my life.

Once I had the frame designed (roughly). I went for it and ordered all the steel and parts to build the bike. I ordered everything 10mm longer than calculated in case I made a mistake. I ended up using butted tubing for everything so I wanted to make sure the thickest part of the tubing was the area I was putting heat into and where the joint would be. The tubing was all order through Bike Fab Supply, Andrew was great to work with for all the bending and all the bends came back just like I was hoping they would. The head tube and BB were through Paragon Metal Works and all the fun little bits like dropouts and cable guides were through Metal Guru.

While all the bits were shipping, I headed over to the shop to learn and practice brazing for the first time. It felt fairly intuitive, but I could get sooo much better. If you take a look at the actual pros like MONE and a bunch of local builders and it is mind blowing how clean everything looks.

Once all the steel showed up, we headed to the workshop. Andy and I spent 30 minutes double checking the drawing and numbers and got the jig set up. He helped me to cut the tubing to get close and I went to work on the sander to get the joints nice and lined up. It was a slow process going back and forth from the jig to the sander and back. It took maybe 3 hours and I had the front triangle all ready to go.

Once everything was ready to go, we took a little 3d printed jig and put the bottle boss holes in all 3 tubes.

We tacked everything in place in as many places as we could and went over to our bike stand to braze everything fully up.

We then put the frame back in the jig and continued on to the rear end of the bike. This part was significantly harder than the front triangle. I didn't have all the parts in yet so we couldn't mock things up easily to check tire clearance and what not. We guessed and happen to get lucky. We went a bit wider than needed, but at least the rear end has loads of mud clearance.

We got the rear end and drop outs on and brazed up and were quickly getting to the hardest part of the frame for us. Getting all the little bits on and looking clean. The cable ports, guides, and cleaning up the BB and HT were the hardest parts for me. For some reason the braze just wasn't taking well to the flux and controlling the heat was so hard. We did the best we could and concluded that they were not structural parts of the frame, so it was okay that they kind of sucked.

The photo below was the worst joint of them all. Everything else looked fairly clean, but this one got contaminated or something and was popping and angry.

We got the frame fully brazed up that day. It took about 10 hours for 2 idiots who don't know what they are doing to get it done. If I were to build another, I think I could do it in 40% less time. Pretty exciting prospect. I took the frame home with me to soak in the bathtub and try to get some of the burnt flux off. I still don't know how to do that part well. Some of it came off super easily and some of it was a battle for hours. For all the sections of frame I couldn't submerge, I wrapped a wet wash cloth around the tubes and let them sit.

The next morning I woke up early to head to the San Util shop to get all the logos and decals cut out for the frame. I used a Cricut to cut out some stickers. I ran over to the metal shop and sprayed the first coat of paint that would ideally be the logos (under the black and cobweb). I didn't use any steel primer or anything and wish I would have. Some of the gold ended up peeling with the sticker logos. It ended up looking really cool and like I meant to do it, but for the next build, I will take more time to do it right.

I used Spray Bike paint for everything. Their videos online were super helpful and gave me the confidence I needed to take on this project. It was still a bit of a "try it and figure it out" process, but it came together so good at the end. Here are a bunch of photos of that process.

After paint, we clear coated the whole frame (even the raw steel bits) and let it dry for most of the day. I am sure I jumped the gun on the components build, but at this point it was 8pm on Friday and I needed to head out at 6pm Saturday to go race the Breck Epic. A bunch of buddies pulled through and helped me get it all built up. We were jamming out and hanging till about 2am, but pulled it all together (barely).

Finally, it was time to head to Breck for the Breck Epic, a race I had been training for all summer and then directly to the MADE Bike Show in Portland. The whole process was one of the most rushed creative processes I have ever been a part of, but I could not be more grateful. It was a project that I needed in that season of life to get me through and have something to look forward to when my head hit the pillow. Huge thanks to Andy (Hideaway Park Brewery) for not only helping me with the frame, but for knowing I was going to need help in Portland and for buying a plane ticket to come help. That was an insane friend move.

For everyone we met in Portland or has expressed interest in anything we are doing. Thank you. This whole project (San Util) has developed into something I could have never dreamed of. It has led me to new and crazier dreams that I am oh so excited and scared to start working on. Ill leave that their for now, but stay tuned. I have a lot in the works right now.

Here is a photo dump from our friends Nic and Neil at Bikepacking.com. Neil made some insanely good videos from every day of the MADE show.