Hi Ted!
Its Max,
Glad to see you on here, I just joined. I’m hoping to have a shed built out with some tools by the summer. You’ll be welcome to pop in and get some more shop time then 
.
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Photo collage on point!
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Heyya. My name is Thomas and I do F!RST L!GHT frames in Vancouver, BC.
I’m a journeyperson pipefitter who always wanted to try building frames but had no clue where to start.
Somehow I started listening to the Shut Up and Build Bikes podcast on my morning bike commute, and then when Brodie put out his videos on how to build frames and the pandemic shutdowns hit it was game over.
My first bike was a Cross Check copy with some tweeks, and I swore I wasn’t going to go through the same pain in the ass again…for a week or two. Now I’m hooked.
I’m currently finishing frame #5 and benefit a lot from bugging WZRD on Instagram, and Paul Brodie in real life. I also re-paint and repair frames, which is probably the best thing to be doing.
I’m really liking that this forum is bringing out us amateurs. Most of the media we get is obviously focused on pros, but for those of us who aren’t business focused it’s hard not to get swept up into buying a whole bunch of expensive stuff and taking ourselves super seriously.
I’m planning on going to the Made.Bike show in August and would love to connect with as many of you as possible.
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Here is a RideMonkey 8020 jig build that became a frame building thread that became a great resource.
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Hi, I’m Will. I build under the name Scharen Cycles in Ashland, Oregon. We have a pretty great climate here for year-round riding. My focus is dirt: MTB and “gravel” bikes and though I do custom frames, I have been focusing on refining two primary models: a drop-bar gravel bike and a hardtail mountain bike. I’m a firm believer in forward geometry and both these bikes are designed to shred.
My latest exciting development has been a steel gravel fork built around a 3d-printed crown I developed with most of the design work by Ralf Holleis of Huhn Cycles. It utilizes a straight 1 1/8" steerer but the crown has a built-in taper to 1 1/2" to make it compatible with frames that are designed for that taper. I’m sure there’s a place to share more about that project here on this forum.
A little history: I attended UBI in 2013 and built a few frames a year until January 2021 when I founded Scharen Cycles. Since then I have been trying to figure out how to get any traction in this crazy world. I’m hopeful that the Made show in Portland will be a good place to get my name out there. I sent a bike to Russ at Path Less Pedaled and his great YouTube review got 30,000+ views and has gotten me no sales yet, so that was interesting. I currently have a hardtail frame waiting for a review from Steve at the Hardtail Party YouTube channel. We’ll see what happens!
I’m still working 20+ hours a week at my day job and wondering if frame building could be full time. I’m ok if it doesn’t work out that way, as long as i can pay my shop rent and continue to enjoy what I’m doing!
Cheers, everybody! Thank you, Daniel for kickstarting this community!
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Hi there everyone!
Chris here, based in Ulm, Germany
Im a hobbyist with 7 Frames under my belt which I built in one intense Summer... Im a “professional” Bike-mechanic and am currently studying mechanical engineering.
I think framebuilding made me study engineering…
Most of my riding is MTB, but I especially enjoy building commuter-bikes and Randonneurs.
I dont build under a brand-name obvsly, but I like to write “AMARENA” on my Downtube.
I love the idea of a Framebuilding specific forum and have been reading pretty much all the threads on here…
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Welcome.
Ulm home of Krieghoff.
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My name’s Chris and I’m slowly getting the tools and skills together to build my first frame. I live in the SW of England, near Bristol. I’ve been into bikes for years - mostly audax/brevets and longer distance road but some MTB and gravel - and have wanted to build my own bikes for a long time but have never had the space to do so until recently.
I’ve always worked as a mechanical design engineer but until recently my jobs have never really been that hands-on so I’ve been looking for a way to actually make stuff and develop my machining and fabrication skills. I’m building tooling on a hobby lathe and mill as well as teaching myself to TIG weld.
My frame fixture (based upon the Cobra Creator) is nearly complete. I’m currently making tube blocks and will then move on to a chainstay/seatstay mitre fixture. Frame #01 will be for a winter road/light touring bike.
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Hello all, happy to see that this forum is starting to gain steam!
Who am I? My name is Will Hilgenberg (He/Him) and I am currently building bikes under the Albatross Bikes moniker. Up until recently, we were based out of Santa Cruz, CA but life events have pushed us to move to the Bothell, WA area.
To provide a bit of background, I grew up with my dad running his own motorcycle restoration business: Speed and Sport. This provided me with a lot of time working with a lathe and mill to help his work as well as exposure to what it takes to run your own business. I ended up going to college for an Aeronautical Engineering degree at Cal Poly SLO where I started building Human Powered Vehicles.
These recumbent bikes exposed me to all the aspects of cycling esoterica from drivetrain design to composite fabrication and finally to handling geometry. Fortunately all of this culminated in receiving an opportunity to work as an internship and finally a contract position with Specialized Bikes helping to build their wind tunnel.
This would lead to a job with Praxisworks following graduation where I got to dive in the deep end of the OEM bicycle world designing everything from bottom brackets and cranks to chainrings and maybe even a derailleur or two.
From there I spent a few years at Bell Helmets designing helmets and running a few R&D projects and then onto Ibis cycles where I contributed to the Ibis Exie project as well as a few other things that I can’t talk about just yet.
All of this contributed to my desire to start building frames and designing products on the side to develop the ideas that wouldn’t work for the OEM-scale businesses but could work on a smaller scale. This started with some frame projects and eventually developed into me running Albatross Bikes as a side project.
Right now we are continuing to develop new products such as UDH dropouts, Modular Chainstay Yokes, as well as a few other things that we intend to show at the MADE show this coming year as well as PBE if we can make the budget work.
Overall, I’m looking forward to seeing this forum grow and look forward to helping grow this community however I can.
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Welcome @Amarenaintermezzo ,@chris_n, @WHilgenberg! Funny that we had a wave of three mechanical engineers join!
I think your big bike industry experience is great. There are definitely a lot of holes in their game that can be filled with framebuilding.
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Hi! Im Stephen, but most call me Swood (Pronounced Swud/Swould)
Like most, I rode bikes as a kid as a means of getting around the neighborhood. I didnt really start riding seriously until I was in college in Newport News Va. While there I happened to meet a neighbor who had a bringheli jig in his garage. And so, for the better part of a year I’d bring a six pack over to his place in the evenings and slowly hacked my way though a single speed hardtail frame. I think this was around 2010.
At uni, I studied computer science and spent the better part of the next decade as a software engineer developing and supporting mechanized distribution centers. Although I didnt really have any mechanical engineering pedigree I think I enjoyed the physical aspect of that job far more than the coding side.
Fast forward to 2018, I moved up to Richmond, VA and bought a house, determined to find one with a workspace for framebuilding. Started putting that shop together and in early 2019 drove to Cleveland and picked up a bringheli jig from Travis at Gringo bicycles and thus Swood Cycles was born.
For the first year or so I built a few frames a year, mostly for close friends at basically the cost of materials. And they were rough, given the gap in time from the first frame, I basically was starting from scratch and teaching myself along the way. I started to gain a reputation around town and eventually someone approached me with a picture of this little steel rack and asked if I could make something like it. At the time I wasn’t really sure what it was for, but it seemed easy enough so a whipped it up and posted a picture on insta. A couple days later a received a DM from Tom at Hesson Labs informing me that I had ripped off his product which he was calling the T-Rack. Whoops, sorry Tom.
I of course apologized, and gave credit where it was due. But a few months later a got another note from Tom saying that for one reason or another, his insurance wouldn’t allow him to sell in North America anymore, and if I wanted, I was welcome to take over T-Rack production for NA.
Business was slow for a while and I was still a full time software engineer. Until one day, Russ from the Path Less Pedaled got his hands on one and did a full video review. And within a few days a had 50+ T-Rack orders. Orders continued to grow as the word got out and I soon found myself with no time to work on frames between full time work and t-rack orders.
So in 2021 I left my full time position, although I still do contract work for them, to pursue Swood Cycles as my primary profession. As of today, I’ve sold over 500 T-Racks (now called T-Bars as to not interfere with Tumbleweed’s T-Rack), built 25 frames and exhibited at PBE twice.
My riding passion lies with Mountain bikes, but it seems most of my customers have wanted road/gravel bikes. Id really like to make some more mountain bikes… My process is fillet braze based for the time being but Im currently heavily experimenting with Tig Steel and Ti.
So yea, that seemed like a lot of typing… Looking forward to having this community as a resource moving forward. Cheers!
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Welcome to the neighborhood! Seattle area has a bunch of great resources for development. Definitely get a hold of Garth and Colin at cyclefab and Devin at LichenPrecision. They have all the resources for taking machined bits and bobs from itereative design to fairly large scale production.
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My name is Whit Johnson and have been trying to be a “pro” at one thing or another my entire life and never successfully, financially at least.
Built my first frame in 2010, business officially in 2013, and I make around 20 frames a year, many with forks, only a handful are complete builds.
Before building I had a lot of bikes:
Big Wheel,
Schwinn Tornado,
Raleigh BMX with motomags,
Schwinn High Sierra - got stolen,
Specialized Hard Rock,
Klein Pinnacle (1987),
Litespeed Ocoee - used,
Moots YBB - (1995),
Ionic Johnny Rotten, E3, & Steelhead,
Nobilette custom cross,
Independent Fabrications Planet X (2000),
Surly 1x1, Karate Monkey, Cross-check.
Spot 29er,
Trek 69er,
Hunter 29er with fork and front rack (2006).
I don’t know why but my idea of “custom” was that the customer should get to choose as much as they wanted - dropouts, BB and head tube type, geometry, look, fit, components, all of it (if they desired). It was my job to figure out how to put it all together and make sure it would accomplish all their goals for the bike. There are not many ideas I’ve said “no” to, but there are ideas I’ve helped massage into a working bike that I’d feel good putting my name behind. Honestly, it’s an awful business model but it does make life interesting because almost every build is a challenge. Like most new builders, I wasn’t charging enough for my time and gave too many bro-deals, but the goal was to get my name out there and earn a positive reputation for when I would be able to raise prices (and hopefully deserve it). I never really got comfortable charging what you need to charge to make a living wage at it so I’ve burned out a couple of times in the last few years only to come back and start offering Ti too. Go figure. I’m an amateur professional.
I don’t know what next year will be like but I plan to considerably change what I’m doing and simplifying things.
I leaned so much at the start from Walt and the mtbr frame forum, as well as Velocipede, and the framebuilder Google group. I’ve reached out to other builders, some of who I’ve looked up to for years, and have gotten lengthy replies and phone conversations. We’re all one and the same, people that love bikes and the community they create. I have always shared my knowledge and experience with anyone who has asked. I stand on the shoulders of many and hope this forum can be a positive learning environment for everyone, including me.
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I listened intently to you interview a couple times on the Shut Up and Build Bikes podcast when I was first starting to build. 
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Hi Everyone!
I’m stoked to be a part of this new forum and looking forward to getting into it.
My name is Brandon Poser and I’m located in Bakersfield, CA. I built my first frame in 2017 but didn’t officially start BAHL Cycle Works, LLC until November of 2019. I’ve been primarily building road and gravel bikes and enjoy everything about it. I’m working on a few other very cool ideas for some people and I’m hoping to get them completed in the coming year.
I went to frame school at Bohemian Frame Building School with Dave Bohm and it was the best decision I could have made. Dave is the man!
I really enjoy coming up with frame design ideas and making them a reality. I’ve been studying and working with CAD because I think there are endless possibilities with 3D printing. I have a long way to go on that front. That being said however, I’m a sucker for rim brakes and mechanical shifting. You could say I’m a bit of a purest.
I love looking at other builders work and trying to figure out how they have done some of the things I’ve seen in their work. It inspires me. I’m constantly trying to better my own work and achieve perfection. Although, I’m not sure that’s possible, the path sure is fun.
Can’t wait to get involved with this forum and I look forward to meeting many of you in the process.
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Hello, I am Matt Brichese from Sacramento-ish, California.
Originally from Venice, Italy, I moved to Norcal following work, I am a garage builder, I have yet to build a frame from scratch, so far only modifications and simple ones at that.
I took welding classes at UC Davis for a year back in 2019 and I hope to get my first jig in 2023 - it’s a dream that is a long time coming, I collaborated with a small frame builder back in Italy and even experimented with carbon fiber and bamboo before leaving everything and restarting my life here - everything took a pause but 2023 is the year!!
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G’day!
Ben (he/him) here from Cooriemungle, VIC, Australia. I go by @bushtrucker on Instagram and some of you might know me there. No frame-building experience yet but I found out about this forum through the SU&BB podcast (thanks Joe!) and figured it’d be a great place to expand my knowledge.
I live out bush (3hrs from Melbourne) and didn’t grow up riding bikes much at all. I fell in love cycling when I moved to the city to study Architecture. I’ve been commuting and touring for almost a decade now — first trip was a 7 month/14,000 km (9,000 mile) tour of the US and Canada in 2014 — and bikes have been my primary interest outside of study and work over that time. More recently I’ve spent a fair bit of time touring Australia, including a few very remote desert trips, and I have been getting more and more into both mountain biking and cargo bikes.
I’m currently riding a custom hardtail from Larkin Cycles (I also own a Crust Dreamer Darren built), a Surly Big Fat Dummy and a Titanium Omnium Mini-Max. It’s rare that a bike I own sees less than 10,000 km. I’ve never ridden competitively so my focus has always been comfort, aesthetics and utility. Day-to-day I’m still working in architecture/building but I’ve recently started a side business distributing Omnium Cargo bikes here in Australia. The plan is to build my own frames when time/money/space allows. Until then I’m stoked to be watching and learning from the sidelines. Really enjoying all these intros too. Cheers!
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Welcome @Matt! I’m in the Bay Area as well. It’s my 2023 goal to build a bike from scratch too! We should collaborate to make sure it happens for both of us!
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@Daniel Deal!!!
I’ve got all the equipment, once I find a jig I can start screwing things up 
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