Spend the money on tools if you plan to make more than one frame and/or are looking to do metal work outside of just bikes.
Tube blocks, hand files, emery cloth, PPE, torch or TIG, vice, digital angle gauge, sharpies, scribe, and a solid work bench. Then decide how you want to hold your 3 datum points.
YouTube and forums are an amazing resource that can answer nearly all of your questions regarding metal work. Paul brodies series on building a frame is a fairly no frills approach, lots of simple techniques that get great results.
You’re in an area with many builders/bike shops, I think someone will help you face, chase, and ream the frame when you’re finished.
Buy some tube and make mistakes. Practice miters, glob some bronze on or burn some holes in them. See what happens when you do it incorrectly.
With a vice, hand files and way to hold the tube in the vice without crushing them, you can start getting your skills honed. I’d recommend doing that even if you plan to take a class, get some hands on experience first.
I wanted to join in this conversation to add my experience (not advice).
I had wanted to build a frame for a while and finally got around to starting. 5 or 6 years ago, I lucked into possession of a Bringheli frame jig through the local bike co-op. It’s a long story, but it was mine to use at the time. I had very little space and was renting out the basement of a friends house. I also had no budget to invest into classes so I got a book called Lugged Bicycle Frame Construction and read through it several times. It covered basics, but I’m more of a hands on learner. I was studying Industrial Design at the time. I ordered the basic road bike kit from CeeWay with their fork kit for somewhere around $200. Basic lugs, tubes and dropouts with a few options to suit your specific needs/wants. My wife got me a used Oxy/Acetylene torch for my birthday that year before the tubing arrived. She talked with family and friends to pitch in and I think it cost around $300. With that, I was off. Cutting tubes with a hacksaw and filing them down to fit perfectly in the lugs. Things went quite smoothly with the reading I had done and a little bit of Youtube. Things started to not go smoothly when I actually had to start using the torch. I had no idea how to properly control the flame. I got a practice bottom bracket shell with the kit and the only thing it taught me was that I was in over my head. I tried but I kept overheating things, under-heating things, and it seemed like nothing went right. The flux that came with the kit was a powder and I had no idea how to use it. This was so disheartening that I lost a lot of motivation to try and figure it out. I moved out of the basement into a different rental and tried again. It turns out that the Oxy/Acetylene tank had a leak and was empty. That was a financial setback. Sure it was only $100 or so to fill, but that was a lot of money to me. So I let it sit for a few months before refilling. Then when I did I ran into those same issues with the flux. Again, I let the project sit and I moved out of a rental and into a house my wife and I bought and are (still) remodeling. Now I had my own 8’x8’ shed. I finally figured out that the flux and the filler rod that I had were not really in the same temperature range. So I had to buy more flux and rod to be able to finish this frame. Once I got that, it all started going much smoother, and within a month or two I had finished the frame. I found a broken Park Tool Fork Alignment Gauge and 3D printed some bits to hold the axle in place and brazed the fork. This worked out great and I’m still kinda proud of that fork. From start to finish, the frame and fork took me 4-5 years to build. I’m embarrassed it took so long, but I had no idea what I was doing wrong and I was doing a lot wrong. It was difficult to run into such simple issues but I had no one to talk to about them. The next frame was a hardtail and took me 2-3 months and was a blast to create. I absolutely love my MTB. I very much believe that it can be done cheaply. There are wonderful teachers out there and they have classes that will show you how to build a bike. I’m glad they are able to make an income offering their classes. I just can’t afford that. All in, I have probably spent less than $1000 in tubing, frame materials, consumables(flux, filler, gas) and tools. This isn’t super normal though since I basically got an $800 jig for free. The hardest part of this whole thing is that you don’t know what you don’t know. It’s a steep learning curve. I’m not aprofessional as far as framebuilding goes. It’s a hobby for me and I had to sacrifice time to be able to do it for cheap.
Just like @Spencermon I wanted to add my 2 cents. I am not nearly as qualified as many builders on here.
I always want to build a frame but the cost of a class was always out of the question plus the time away so in 2020 I almost kicked the bucket and wanted to start removing things from my bucket list. A bike frame was first on the agenda.
I was working at a machine/manufacturing place and had the machinist help build a jig.
I bought a welder and some tools. I went a little overboard with the tool I must admit but I love tools.
You can never get enough practice. Get some scrap tubes and practice while gathering the tools and equipment. Once you get the stuff you are ready.
I don’t have much to add because my path to building frames was and continues to be quite different than most. I do want to say that acetylene is very dangerous and highly unstable in the right (wrong) circumstances. Be careful, if you’re buying a used OA set up check everything very carefully before lighting the torch or even bringing it inside. I check every Acetylene bottle with soapy water before bringing it in the shop and after connecting my regulator.
Noted, thanks for the heads up! I planned on taking several courses in whichever method I decide to go with to ensure I won’t burn down/blow my house up!
sharing my experience here (also definetly not advice)
I am an engineering student in Austria and i built 2 frames so far. The first frame was a huge bodge job. 3 years ago a friend of mine bought a really nice mig welder and i figured it couldn’t be that hard to weld some tubes together to make a bike.
He gave me access to his shop to do most of everything.
We aligned it on his welding table and used the rear hub as an axle spacer. It was very much a you hold it, i’ll weld it type of thing. Not surprisingly it came out not so straight and not very nice looking. The geometry was off and the rear axle was not aligned very well. However-
It worked! It was and still is a fully functioning bike.
Well this last summer i was in the position to try again. This time i really wanted to do better and produce a decent bike. I’m lucky and have a small workspace in my parents garden shed with most of what you need to work on bikes. I didn’t have any framebuilding tools though.
I bought a really cheap tig welder and started to learn tig welding. Mostly through youtube and other online resources. I also bought a really cheap (50€) tube notcher to cut practice pieces for welding. This was a really good investment for me. It took a lot of welding together practice joints to get decent welds.
When i thought my welds were good enough for a bike, i bought some tubing.
I handmitered all tubing with files and a dremel. I used paper templates to get the correct shape.
My frame jig was a sheet of mdf, to which i bolted the bb. I used 3d printed tube blocks to space the tubes from the mdf. This worked pretty well for the front triangle and it came out pretty straight.
The rear end was more challenging. I built a jig out of wood for that and used threaded rod for a dummy axle. This also worked out surprisingly well.
For the cable guides, bottle bosses and some other stuff i bought a small mapp torch to silver braze them to the frame.
I also bought a seat tube reamer, as the cyclus tools reamer wasnt all that expensive.
I started welding in the middle of summer and yesterday i started painting the second frame. So it took me around 6 months to complete the second frame. It still isn’t perfect. The alignment is not perfect and some of welds arent very nice, but its still a frame i am proud of and really excited to build up and ride.
Something I wanted to throw in. When I was a kid, I wanted to learn to snowboard. My dad was into mountain bikes and snowmobiles and junk and he had heard that it was easier to learn to snowboard if you already knew how to ski. I didn’t know how to ski, I didn’t care about skiing. We got skis and it was dumb and I didn’t like it because I didn’t want to learn to ski, I wanted to snowboard.
I feel this way every time I hear someone suggesting getting a brazing setup “just to get started” and then you can switch to tig later, because if you know how to braze learning TIG is easier than just starting from scratch. I heard it constantly when I started. My problem with this is the same as the damn skis, now I have a setup I don’t want, that I have to learn, because it might make the thing I actually want to learn a little easier. And it’s a bit less expensive.
A tig welder is definitely a larger expense if you already bought a brazing setup. Spend the time and money lerning the process you want to learn. I learned to TIG to do build bikes and I’m really glad I did.
I started with TIG - I had no welding experience before that. My first frame was made of mild steel tubing and some salvaged bits (seat tube, BB, dropouts) from an old steel Raleigh frame. It weighed a ton. The big advantage was the thick walls made it much harder to blow a hole in the tubes compared to the thin walls of proper bike tubing. After I’d made the frame, I cobbled together some (mostly scrap) parts, built it, and rode a couple of hundred miles on it. I used coke can offcuts to shim the headset. It wasn’t the best bike but it worked, it gave me the experience I needed to go through the process of building a bike frame and understand where I needed to spend the time and/or money on tooling. So for my first build: my welding sucked, my jig sucked, my technique and skills sucked, the frame sucked, the finished bike sucked … and I loved every minute of it
I’m on my 3rd frame now and no longer using mild steel tubing. I’m still loving it.
If you haven’t already got one, buy a 3D printer. You can make so many useful things with them.
I have to agree. The degree of control with TIG is about 10x more than with a torch. The finished joint is lighter, requires no finishing, and is (arguably) better looking. I learned to ski, but I suck at snowboarding.
I cannot suggest buying a 3D printer enough. All my tube blocks, V blocks, tire checkers, miter templates, alignment tools, headset press, dummy headset and fork fixture use printed parts.
I have even installed brake tabs with a clever printed brake fixture.
Between a solid works makers license, a 3D printer and a chunk of countertop you can build amazing things!
Also, if you want to tig weld, invest in tig welding. You will be miserable finishing brass brazing if it’s not what you want to be doing! Basic Tig welders sell super cheap used. Learn to weld really well on a basic DC welder and when you are ready to upgrade you will understand and appreciate the features.
After using plywood for #1 and #2 (both are straight and still being ridden 12 years later), I got a chunk of countertop. It works fine. Countertops are plenty flat for framebuilding. put it on something that will fully support it. I built several using that. It’s not stiff enough to go with a 3-point system that a true plate would use but, lying it on a flat workbench should be just fine. I finally found a large granite surface plate and that’s much nicer since it’s much bigger (3’x 4’).
I think most are now going with propane and Oxy concentrators or Oxy tanks. It’s just so much more convenient and there is a lot of info on the various forums about the right set up. I don’t disagree with those saying to just get started with TIG either.
I’m gathering a 3D printer would be useful, I don’t know that I could support it with my space/set up. I read you need a relatively climate controlled environment and I really only have room in my uninsulated garage for a workshop (I live in Denver, regularly in the teens at night and 30’s/40’s during the day in the Winter and my house is only 600sf so no room inside). It will probably be warm by the time I actually get to the point of needing most of this tooling/jigs so maybe by that time it will make sense?
I think most people have convinced me of learning TIG, it’s ultimately where I’d like to be anyway (my preference visually at least).
A 3D-printer is best run indoors in a relatively clean environment in my experience - keep it away from metalworking and the like. It doesn’t have to be enormous unless you have solid plans to print large parts - start small and see how it works out. Mine has a 180x180mm build plate (few of my prints come close to needing even half of that) and lives on a bookcase beside my desk. It takes up about the same surface space as an inkjet printer but is a bit taller. I’m sure you could get pretty inventive with storing it if space is tight. Some of the newer models also look more like fancy consumer gadgets than the mechanical eyesore that mine is.
I completely agree with everyone on getting a 3d printer! They’re really handy for improvising small jigs, holders or anything else. They have also become really cheap. I got a used Ender 3 for 100 € with filament.
If you can get a hold of a copy of Richard Talbot’s Designing and Building Your Own Frameset: An Illustrated Guide for the Amateur Bicycle Builder, that book pretty much describes the absolute bare-bones tools you need to build a (lugged) frame. He includes instructions for making fork and frame jigs from plywood and hardwood blocks, and silver-brazes lugged joints using a MAPP-air torch. Everything else is done using files, hacksaw, and a hand drill.
