Day 5

With an early start Mike finished the last challenging bits of welding on the frame that I couldn’t manage, such as the inside of the chainstays, and we moved on to braze-ons and crafting the fork. After learning to weld, learning to braze a water bottle or rack boss on the frame was comparably a breeze. A brush of flux, a few motions just so with the torch, and feed it a wire of silver braze. After bending the fork blades to the described offset and notching the various parts of the segmented fork, in the effort of time Mike welded the fork while I continued to tackle the umpteen cable guides and bottle bosses my ultimate touring frame required. We finished the day by giving the frame and fork a bath in etching fluid to remove the excess flux and to clean the tubes of contaminants and worked into the night readying for racks and paint.

Day 6

The mountain touring bike and racks were an ambitious project, and admittedly more than what is reasonable to tackle in a normal week’s class time. Saturday morning was spent trading off between file and emery cloth, making sure excess braze was smoothed out and any unsightly welds filed down. As I filed and polished away Mike hand bent and welded a heavy duty version of his D-Rack for the front of the bike, with another rack taking shape for the rear just after. By dinner time I’d been given a quick lesson on how to powdercoat and had baked my frame in ANT blue with gloss black racks. By 10pm I took my first ride around the parking lot and it was lights out, course complete.

The ANT framebuilding course is something I will talk about for the rest of my life, a remarkable experience to not only gain a far greater understanding of the bicycle but spend a week side by side with an artisan at the top of his craft. It’s a rare opportunity, but within reach of many who would like to make it happen. Long after the class is complete there remains a bike to ride that you made. The experience furthered my understanding of both the machine and what drives people to craft them. It’s easy to see how many find it an addicting process of experimentation and creation. I sincerely hope it is not my only opportunity to create a bicycle from a stack of tubes.

Spending a few days atop this bike on the way to Frederick MD this past October proved every decision throughout the process correct. With Mike’s expertise in touring I had no doubt that it would handle like a dream, but nothing proves it like a few hundred miles in the saddle.

Full disclosure: Urban Velo traded advertising space for the framebuilding course fees, and paid out of pocket for travel expenses. Alternative Needs Transportation is our
longest standing advertising client to date, having been a
paid advertiser in each and every issue of Urban Velo.

Vetta

Oury