Hey all! So stoked to be here, this is shaping up to be a great resource for the community. Big thanks to @Daniel_Y for getting it up and running!
Thought it would be nice to get an introduction thread going - feel free to share whatever you’re comfortable with, a good starting point would be:
Starting off, I’m Eva (she/her/hers) - I founded Liberation Fab last year-ish and just moved across the country from Seattle, WA to Pittsburgh, PA. I’m pretty new to building frames, but am really enjoying the process and have benefitted immensely from all the knowledge shared by folks I recognize on this forum.
I’m trying to avoid sliding into a niche for the time being, but I’m very drawn to building bikes that enable folks to extend their abilities through cycling. Whether that’s a bike designed for long-distance touring or car-free trips to the grocery store, it warms my heart to see folks using bikes to accomplish more than they could without one.
My “athletic” background is in mountaineering and climbing and I love cycling trips that feel similar to that. Long distances rides over varied or unknown terrain that are remote and self-supported are my happy place. But bopping around the city running errands is how I spend 95% of my time in the saddle.
I’m really excited about learning all the ancillary things that come with building frames - currently I’m deep in anatomy research so I can be more intentional with what a size run of frames would look like. Uriel at Austere has also gotten me way too stoked on lean manufacturing, I’ve been thinking a lot about how that could apply to frame building.
My work/education background is in electrical engineering. I worked on some cool stuff for NASA and other less savory space-fairing orgs before bailing to consumer electronics startups for the past few years. Got pretty burned out on that and frame building fell into my lap at the right time to seem like a good alternative!
Great Idea Eva!
Name: Daniel
Location: Nothern Californa
Hometown: Southern Califonia
I love riding anything with two wheels: road, mountain, xc, enduro, dh, track. Except gravel bikes (hot take).
To me framebuilding is a creative outlet. It combines two things that I love, riding bikes and enginering. Its funny to say “Framebuilding” because I haven’t built a frame yet, atleast physically. I do all the design work in Fusion360 and am known for 3D printing things.
I work mostly with Nick Neuhaus at Neuhaus Metalworks, but I help out a bunch of other builders with design and parts.
My background is in Mechanical engineering, specfically robotics and control systems. I worked as a software engineer at a 3D printing company. More recently I got laid off (Winter 2022), and decided to spend the next 8 months developing new framebuilding technologies and building up the community.
Areas of interest:
Here is a pic of me riding a bike designed for a 6’6 rider.
I’m Alex Wetmore.
I got into framebuilding by seeing other hobbyists like Josh Putnam (who created the old framebuilders@bikelist.org mailing list – now on Google Groups), Hahn Rossman and Alistair Spence building their own frames. All were Seattle-area hobbyists who also helped accelerate my own path. As a hobbyist I built dozens of racks and 5 frames (one starting with a donor) between 2006 and 2014. I’ve been on pause since then except for the occasional small project, and my fixtures are loaned out to friends.
I really like making my own fixtures and have had at least as much fun with that as with building bikes. I am posting partially to suggest that we have a machining or fixture building section on here (or maybe the 3D printing section can be renamed to be more inclusive).
Some of my projects:
Thanks to Eva for telling me about the new forum.
Alex
Hi! I’m Charlie (he/they), and I’m in Anchorage Alaska.
I’ve built two frames so far, my first was a cross/all road bike that I hand filed and fillet brazed in 2019. My second frame is a utility/commuter bike that I did a mix of hand filing and milling, and fillet brazed together in 2020. The next bike in the jig is going to be a brazed randoneurring/touring frame, and I’m going to try my hand at making a lugged crown fork and bending some fork blades. I just moved my shop into a commercial space, and I’m using this frame to figure out my fab shop organization and process for mitering and fixturing. I’m also hoping to build up a fat bike this winter, and maybe a fun triple triangle cross race bike to get some practice with weird joints. I really enjoy building well thought out, utility centered bikes. I’ve made some custom racks and integrated panniers, and am excited to dive deeper into that realm.
Here I am in Sitka with my most recent frame
I started out road racing when I was young, but the roads in Alaska aren’t so good. I got into mountain biking/bikepacking, fatbiking, some downhill and enduro riding. I really enjoy medium distance touring. I rode about 900 miles of the tour divide route before I went to college, and then a few years later rode the Haul Road from Prudhoe Bay to Anchorage, about 900 miles as well. I’m excited to do more road touring down in the lower 48 and see how many bakeries I can stop by. Next tour is hopefully to the east coast to catch the PBE and do some riding up in Vermont when the colors are nice.
I am the Executive Director of the Susitna Bicycle Institute. We’re a nonprofit bike mechanic school based in Anchorage. I teach hands on bike repair classes across the state. We do individual classes on any mechanical topic, and also travel to remote Alaskan communities that don’t have any bike shop infrastructure to help communities develop bike programming. We helped set up a bike co-op in Sitka, and have worked with several school districts to teach kids bike maintenance basics and bring tools to leave out there. We’re aiming to open up a framebuilding program (once I’ve got some more experience) so we can work with kids in a more comprehensive vocational capacity. We are super focused on expanding accessibility to cycling for users who have been historically excluded from cycling culture writ large. We facilitate safe learning environments and community gatherings for BIPOC riding groups, queer cyclists, girls mentorship programs, and other community-driven bike groups.
I’m really eager to put my tig machine together and get some more practice on that. I’m excited to explore the more artistic side of framebuilding, like making headbadges and cool integrated gadgets in the frame. I’ve been slowly trying to learn how to do CAD drawings so I can make tools and components. I’m hoping to get a lathe soon so I can make other parts and tooling. I’d eventually love to make a set of hubs.
I’m really excited about this forum, and have a ton of questions that I’m really stoked to ask and talk about!
Hi, I’m Steve Hampsten. I’m happy to be here - heck, I’m happy to be anywhere at this point. I look forward to seeing what develops.
Wow, thanks to everyone for posting so far.
@Alex great forum suggestion. I moved the 3D printing topics to general. If there are enough machining, tooling, and fixturing topics, I will branch off and create a new forum.
I am also very interested in seeing people’s cnc projects. I think there are enough framebuilders with CNC machines to start a small economy (selling services to other builders). When the need arises, I can create a CNC forum.
@CharlieSBI what a cool journey to this forum and background in cycling. Riding in Alaska must be wild (literally). The Susitna Bicycle Institute is a great project. I personally think the future of framebuilding lies in urban bikes, and the work you do is laying down the groundwork.
I created the education sub-forum as a safe space for students and new builders to ask questions without judgement. It is also home to resources and tutorials. I hope you and your future students will find it useful.
Howdy! I’m Nick Jensen in Reno, NV.
I built my first frame (a traditional road tourer) with Doug Fattic in 2007 and started Manzanita Cycles in 2019.
I enjoy riding in the mountains, on or off road. There’s nothing like tackling a long climb, taking a little snack break, and then bombing back downhill.
Like so many other framebuilders, I wear all the hats in my business. Although there’s plenty I can still learn about building a frame, it’s the business side of the work that I look forward to discussing with others in this wild profession.
Thanks so much for getting this going Daniel! There is a ton of funding for technical learning for kids up here with a huge emphasis on 3d printing, design and fabrication, so I’m psyched to delve into that. Huge fan of your 3d printed parts. I think there’s a lot of potential to design and send files for parts out to fabrication centers across the state. My dream is to work with kids to help them design what they think is a perfect bike for the specific terrain in their towns/villages.
Hey there! My name is Taylor Sizemore. I have been out of framebuilding for a few years but used to build under the name Sizemore Bicycle.
Over the past month or so I have been thinking about what it would look like to start up a framebuilding shop again and focus at the front end on designing a business that’s profitable.
I built for around 8 years and closed up shop shortly after completing the Denny Bike. A bike I designed with Teague for the final iteration of the Oregon Manifest competition. The Denny got tons of press worldwide and won the competition, yet I wasn’t getting any new clients myself, despite all the traffic.
I felt that If I was going to continue running Sizemore I would need to pivot. I decided to not pivot and move on from framebuilding.
Recently framebuilding has come up so often that I can’t ignore it. I’m inspired to design v2 of my framebuilding career too, lots of “good insomnia” lately, lying awake thinking about tooling, marketing, all of it!
I’ll keep you tuned to whatever happens, I won’t be able to get started for another year at least. But it’s a good time to plan!
Thanks for building this Daniel (and thanks for choosing Discourse!)! There is so much good energy in framebuilding right now, I’m stoked to be here!
Howdy. I’m Travis (he/him/his), and I build bikes, racks, tools, and anything else that comes to mind in Salt Lake City under the name Sunshine Fabrication. I mostly build for myself, but I have built a few racks and tools for friends, etc.
I really enjoy riding mountain bikes and I really like math. I like to combine these two and sweat the details to build modern mountain bikes. I also really enjoy the freedom I have as a hobby builder. I am beholden to no schedule other than my own, so my projects take commercially unacceptable amounts of time, but (in my opinion) they contain commercially unviable attention to detail. I don’t have an interest in building bike frames for a job, but I could see a possible future side hustle making niche racks for those who are interested. However, I really love the frame building community and the problem solving that this sort of technical fabrication offers, so I’ll be around.
I got into this realm because I interned at Paragon Machine Works as a CAD/CAM programmer one summer in college. One thing led to the next, and I worked for Pete Olivetti for a little while in the summer of 2019, and that’s where I learned how to build bikes. I have since been building out of my shed in Salt Lake City. I am a graduate student studying Robotics here in Salt Lake City, and this really limits the time I can allot to building bikes, making them take even longer to complete 
I’m excited to see where modern manufacturing methods and an interest in sharing processes take this craft, and I think this new forum is precisely the place to be to see this future unfold. Thanks Daniel!
My name is Guy. I make frames in my shed for fun in New Zealand. My local trails are up mount Pirongia but I am also about an hour and a half from Rotorua so end up spending a fair amount of time riding there.
So far I have made 6 frames, and I have plans for at least 6 more. I may end up making a few to sell at some point but more to fund future builds than make a living/career out of.
I have no formal engineering background to speak of, but I have been designing and making things for my own enjoyment since I was in my early teens.
Hi everyone -
I’m Walt Wehner, and I’m a retired framebuilder (though I still build a few days a month mostly for fun). I was a professional mountain bike racer in the late 90s/2000s (lifetime earnings: enough to pay myself approximately minimum wage, woot!) and started building frames back before there was much information out there online. It’s been fun to watch the world of custom frames progress beyond endless discussions of lug shorelines on the latest standard 73/73 road frame!
I lost a computer to a beverage-spill incident back before cloud backup was a thing, so I’m not sure precisely how many frames I’ve built but it’s probably around 1200, with at least that many forks as well.
I have built/still occasionally build basically everything from gravel to road to full suspension mountain bikes, tandems, MUNIs, and on and on, but I mostly like to build mountain bikes because that’s what I exclusively ride these days (when it’s not ski season).
I also taught a framebuilding class for many years, though I have now stopped doing that. I taught about 50 people to build bikes, some of whom went on to become professional builders themselves.
These days I try to chase after my 3 kids (3, 8, 10) and am a ski coach and part time elementary school teacher to keep busy (and yes, I am probably busy enough without those things…)
For those interested in the financial/business side of building bikes, I might be a good resource, and I can also offer advice on basically all topics related to old-school (ie not carbon or 3d printing!) fabrication.
That said I do not spend much/any time on forums or social media outside of the occasional instagram post so if I don’t reply to you right away don’t be offended. I was probably out skiing or chasing kindergarteners around.
-Walt
Name: Nick Neuhaus
Location: Novato, California
I have grown up around wheeled things and racing. From BMX to motorcycles I’ve raced them all and I just love making things go fast. I’ve been very fortunate in that I have had some amazing mentors over the years that have shared a wealth of knowledge around riding, design, and fabrication. I’ve always been surrounded by people who felt it was critical to share knowledge so as not to stifle progress and I think what Daniel has created here will help elevate all of us to new levels.
As far as current interest, I just like riding my bike, I think that’s ultimately what has brought us all here. I have distanced myself from direct competition over the last few years and now just enjoy being outside and riding.
Name: Brian Earle
Location: North Vancouver, BC
I’m a garage builder, with the infamous North Shore trails in my backyard and I build mountain bikes for myself. Mostly full suspension bikes. Learned by ready EVERYTHING posted by the likes of Walt, Steve Garro and others on the MTBR framebuilding forum. Set myself up with a propane / oxygen generator brazing setup thanks to the information shared by Doug Fattic on VSalon and just got down to it teaching myself in the garage.
Most recent build.
Hello everybody. My name is Nicholas Haig-Arack and I live in good ol’ Santa Rosa, California.
I’m not a builder, but I have worked for a number of framebuilders and component manufacturers since 2009 as a graphic designer, illustrator, copywriter, photographer, marketing advisor, event coordinator, shop assistant, tube cutter, broom technician, and test pilot 
.
I’m thrilled to share what I know and learn from all of you.
Here’s a photo of me in a SimWorks shirt I designed
Hi all,
My name is Brendon. I’ve been building frames for about 15 years and got so much help from the old frameforum when I was getting started. Over the years I’ve drifted from wanting to make a brand to just deciding that I must be an amateur framebuilder because I never wanted to do it alone and never really found anyone to do it with, but hey that’s cool…I’ve built a lot of things I’ve been happy about and I guess that’s the most important thing.
I’m super stoked to find this forum, and am really excited to have a new place for all of us bike nerds to share knowledge about how to build the bikes we’re dreaming of! Yay!
Thanks to everyone who’s here and I’m excited to get to know folks better.
-b
edit:
I realized maybe I should post a photo of the last thing I built that got me stoked so I’m going to post a photo of the second full-suspension I built last year.
Hey everyone, my name is Joshua (they/ them). I run Terraform Cycles in Gatineau, Quebec. For the last two years I’ve only built hard tails. I find them fun but was starting to get a little bored. My passion for bikes stemmed from touring mostly, but I haven’t been able to tour for the last few years because of covid / school. My partner and I decided to do a tour in 2023 and it gave me the excuse to build two nice all-road bikes. I’ve been trying to change from bespoke only to offering models and a few spots for bespoke so it is a great excuse to build up some prototypes.
Right now I’m really into incorporating 3d printed parts and have been using some yokes & cable ports from Daniel on my hardtails.
The attached image is a hardtail I made last summer, and the first with a yoke from Daniel.
Dang that thing looks good!
