The first bike I ever built

[bebnin]

The dream has always (in the past few years or so), been to build a bike, and ride the Argus (or cycle tour, or hatever you want to call it) on said bicycle.  An achievable dream I reckon (done the "race" a couple times, no record breaking mind you). 

 

What first stopped me was the fact that bicycle tubes are hard to come by, and not particularly cheap. So I left it a while. My workshop is pretty comprehensive at the moment, and I eventually decided I may as well try with mild steel, the stuff that's readily available and comparatively cheap, and only half as strong as 4130 (+_250 mpa vs +_450 mpa yield strength, which i barely understand). 

I don't yet have oxy/acetylene for brazing (it's high on the list of things I want to invest in), but I have a good tig welding machine and enough skill with it to keep welds together. I found some geometry online for a commuter/street bike (it was a surly something or other, rest assured that geometry is VERY different to the bike that I made). I had a rough plan, I decided there was nothing to lose and dived right into it. 

A few weeks later this came out, my first bike. Many many lessons on measure twice cut once, many lessons on draw it 1:1 (I never did this. But watched enough paul brodie videos to know I was stupid not to). Greatly improved my welding from the start of the project. After first making the frame there were some improvments needed: Replaced the bb shell because it was too thin and warped, replaced the head tube because it was too small for headset cups, then replaced the downtube because the head angle was waaaaay off (thanks to WCW guys for some pointers on that one). Then rode it once or twice. And replaced the fork because geometry again. Then a lot of faffing with tyre clearance because I liked the chunky 700x42c tyres. Anyways. All in all a rodeo. 

Components were sourced almost ad cheap as possible because budget. These are the components for those interested:

-Easton rims (raided from jewbacca a few years back)

-fsa (gossamer?) Cranks from classifieds, probably richiespares

-second hand disc hubs (no name i could see) from WCW, New spokes and nips from WCW

-600mm straight bars were lying around

-no name aliexpress mech disc brakes (they're not very good)

-no name aliexpress brakes, which broke in shipping so made new levers for them

-made the stem, cassette spacers, fork racers, top cap, seat clamp (top of the seat clamp was from a bontrager seatpost from wcw)

-Chain was leftover bits from different chains from bike shop days.

-seat was something on which the leather had all fallen off, just a plastic saddle with bent rails, had to add foam and leather.

-skewers are m5 all thread with dome nuts and washers (I will upgrade this at some point, it's already frustrating)

-I had one specialized sawtooth 700x42c lying around in my shop (don't know where I got it from, it's been there for years). Bought a second one to match (this was the biggest expense on the actually bike).

-pedals were another "lying around for years" piece that I found in the box at home.

-specialized grips from Solomons cycles because they were cheap (and matched the tan sidewalls)

-headset was from the "old trash headsets" box at WCW (thanks again nils)

-eccentric bb was me, bearings from silkuni because bb30 standard is one of the only bicycles standards that's also industry standard (6806 bearings).

 

Final notes on the +-20km I've ridden this bike so far: it is big (I'm pretty tall, like 1.93m), it's waaay too high off the ground, (you've probably heard of bb drop, but what about bb rise?), feels like I'm leaning over the front end a bit too much, it's not very stable because of the high centre of gravity and steep headtube (I cannot ride my bike with no handlebars. Yet). I am unsure of whether this is a wise decision on which to ride the cycle tour, the jury is still out on that. It's heavy.

If you read all of that, thanks for your time, please ask me questions. I'm relatively excited about this because it worked and I am sure I will be making more bikes in the near future (still sticking with mild steel for now, weight is not something I've ever cared about much). I have many many notes on improvements, ideas for next time etc etc. But will fully appreciate any and all ideas should people have them. 

 

Finally some photos. I'm sure there are more should there be interest.

[Me rida my bicycle]

For a first frame build not bad 👌🏻 did you use a jig to align the rear dropouts? Should be a soft ride, mild steel is pretty flexy. 

I like the seat stays one above the other it's something different. It does look like a short and high bike but you are tall. 

Look forward to seeing what you come up with next 👌🏻

[dasilvarsa]

Looks Good Enjoy the Ride.

[bebnin]

9 hours ago, Me rida my bicycle said:

For a first frame build not bad 👌🏻 did you use a jig to align the rear dropouts? Should be a soft ride, mild steel is pretty flexy. 

I like the seat stays one above the other it's something different. It does look like a short and high bike but you are tall. 

Look forward to seeing what you come up with next 👌🏻

Thanks. I used pretty thick walled stuff (like 2mm walls on everything) - so I'm not sure it's soft, but I don't really know how to compare frame stiffness, haven't ridden enough to feel for that. 

Seat stays above one another is unfortunately not an original idea (althought it was to me, and I agree it looks cool) - it's been done before by Weiss bikes, although perhaps not in the same way. 

Didn't have a jig, but I did bolt the dropouts between some all-thread to keep them spaced - then after welding everything,  used a piece of string that goes from drop out - around the head tube and back to the other drop out (in order to measure the distance of the seat-tube from each piece of string to check for centred-ness). then I place block of wood on the rear drop-out and head tube and bounced on the middle of the bike until I had bent everything centred. (this whole process was suggested by Rolf). 

[BuffsVintageBikes]

Well done, that's very impressive for someone with zero frame building experience 🤙

[peetwindhoek]

Bliksem, that is so cool! If you have to guess, how many hours of effort was involved in this as I cannot think it was done after work quick one day

[Robbie Stewart]

I'm pretty sure the build project was as much fun as the final result. Well done for taking this on and doing something worthwhile. 

interesting geometry you got going there, but I'm sure the lessons learned in this build will be carried over to the next one. This is such a cool thing you've got going there.

[Jewbacca]

It looks like a perfect Polo Bike..... We should get the gang back together and see how badly we all still suck at Bike Polo.

That would be a perfect test of the welding/strength... I will invite Donde and he will try and break it in the first 5 minutes unapologetically 🤣 

[bebnin]

10 minutes ago, peetwindhoek said:

Bliksem, that is so cool! If you have to guess, how many hours of effort was involved in this as I cannot think it was done after work quick one day

hahaha, yeah, quite a few hours, especially with all the "adjustments" and error-correction. Had about a week of holiday when I started, and then 2 weeks of after work shenanigans figuring the last bits out. Getting all the "bits" sorted out was way more effort that I expected - definitely could've saved a fair amount of time on some fronts, but all good fun figuring it out of course.

[bebnin]

5 minutes ago, Jewbacca said:

It looks like a perfect Polo Bike..... We should get the gang back together and see how badly we all still suck at Bike Polo.

That would be a perfect test of the welding/strength... I will invite Donde and he will try and break it in the first 5 minutes unapologetically 🤣 

pretty sure we all still suck pretty badly at bike polo. but I'm keen to try again (Donde might also know where all the clubs/sticks are?)

I'm fairly confident it won't break, but maybe he'll find a way 😂

[JM Rides Bikes]

Wow this is awesome! Well done!

 

I just built up my first bike from a bare frame and now, with this inspiration, building a bike from steel tubes seems the natural progression😅.
 

You said there are more photos please do post them we’d love to see😁

[lechatnoir]

That's amazing! Well done and thanks for sharing.

Two observations - that seatpost will not be budging for a some time with 3 bolts... And how is that toe overlap?

 

[bebnin]

23 minutes ago, Jeanne Michael du Plessis said:

Wow this is awesome! Well done!

 

I just built up my first bike from a bare frame and now, with this inspiration, building a bike from steel tubes seems the natural progression😅.
 

You said there are more photos please do post them we’d love to see😁

very nice! the natural progression 😂 perhaps, but there don't seem to be many framebuilders out there at the moment.

 

Yeah, have some photos from as I was building, will take a look later and see what I can find.

[bebnin]

2 minutes ago, lechatnoir said:

That's amazing! Well done and thanks for sharing.

Two observations - that seatpost will not be budging for a some time with 3 bolts... And how is that toe overlap?

 

hahaha, the 3 seatpost bolts are a little overkill, but they definitely fit the look I guess. 

toe overlap is fine so far, I think if the front-centre was any shorter than it would definitely become a problem, I probably need to ride it more before I can say for sure that there's enough clearance though. 

[Jono]

Love this!

Well done on a successful and fantastic project and thank you for sharing! I’ve been wanting to build a frame for some time now and just keeping pushing the project down the list. This is a bit of inspiration. 

[bebnin]

1 hour ago, Jono said:

Love this!

Well done on a successful and fantastic project and thank you for sharing! I’ve been wanting to build a frame for some time now and just keeping pushing the project down the list. This is a bit of inspiration. 

thanks! I can only recommend it, it's good fun. I've also got plenty extra tubing as everything was bought in minimum 6meter lengths (useful for future bikes, but I have enough to share if you're in CPT). 😀