Book of the Week: The Proteus Framebuilding Book
29 Feb 2016
Last week I read about road bike maintenance thinking about how nice it would be to ride a bicycle across America. I thought some more. It would be even nicer to ride across America on a bicycle you built with your own hands. When I heard about the Stanford ME 204 Bicycle Design course, where students build their own bicycle, I felt I had missed out. This week I read The Proteus Framebuilding Book: A Guide for the Novice Bicycle Framebuilder from Proteus Design to learn more about framebuilding so I can build my own bicycle. This book was published in 1975, so the contents are a little dated, but it is short enough for a starting place. The pages look like came out of a typewriter. I wonder if people know what a typewriter is anymore. Construction Methods There 3 main construction methods for making bicycles: TIG, Lugged and Fillet. TIG welding, which melts the filler metal and the frame requires more technique, but less time preparing and sanding joints. Lug and fillet both use brazing, where a metal is melted to join the frame without melting the frame. A lug, which cans like a sleeve for the tubes can be brazed to connect it to the frame. In fillet bikes, there is not lug, so it results in a smoother interface between the frame tubes after you sand it down. The steps for brazing are
- Clean
- Sand
- Acetone wipe
- Flux
- Braze
Silver and bronze are the two main fillers used in fillet brazed bikes. Silver Filler
- More expensive
- Lower temperature
- Can’t fill large gaps
Bronze Filler
- Less expensive
- Higher temperature
- Can fill large gaps
Silver is easier to work with because there is larger temperature gap before you overheat the thin tube, but it is more expensive and cannot fill large gaps. Frame Design To design of the frame, you need to choose the tradeoff between stability vs responsiveness. You want a racing bike to be responsive while you want a touring bike to be comfortable and stable. Racing bikes tend to have a shorter wheel base, steeper head/seat tubes, shorter chainstay, smaller fork rake. Touring bikes need more clearance for things like fenders. Classes Reading books are nice, but I started out in this, because I wanted something hands on. Fortunately there are classes you can take for about $3k for 2 weeks, which includes cost of materials and leaving with a working frame.
- UBI - 2 week classes on (TIG, Brazing, Titanium) for.
- Bohemian - 2 weeks, includes fork, also has carbon fiber course
- Yamaguchi - 2 weeks, includes fork
- Waltworks - 2 weeks
- Brew Bikes - 1 week
- The Crucible - one-speed mountain bike
- Defthouse Bicycles - 3 day
If you want information more after reading this book, The Paterek Manual is over 400 pages on framebuilding.
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