Also, Paul Brodie is no longer teaching, University of Fraser Valley (where the course was based out of) shuttered the program in 2020, and he didn’t want to teach out of his home shop. He is now focusing his teaching efforts on his YouTube channel
Part of the reason I picked up the torch (pun intended!) was Paul’s teaching retirement, to continue having a Canadian/west coast course option. I previously worked as his teaching assistant at UFV, so a lot of my class structure is grounded in that learning.
Yes, the goal is for each student to go home with a frame, and I hope to go over basic geometry both on the first days of the class and also ideally prior to the class start so we have rough designs ready to build from. My philosophy for someone’s first frame is much like what was imparted upon me at UBI (by my instructor Tony Pereira), where it was recommended we use an existing geo from a production bike or personal bike, and make slight tweaks to that if need be - all other considerations like bottle bosses and other mounting points can be figured out during the class, but I’d like to have 1-1 convos shortly before hand about rough design aspirations.
Hi, I just joined the community here on recommendation from Jesse Turner (slow southern steel) and Michael Crum (Magnolia Cycles).
We [myself and two colleagues] are gearing up to start a Bicycle Fabrication course at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville this Fall. The course will be offered through the School of Art. Our first class is full and will be offered this Fall MW11a-1:45p
Thanks to Steve McGuire, Brant Weiland, and the University of Iowa for their help in starting this program, and for teaching us a lot of what we have learned thus far. (And to this forum for helping to fill in the gaps)
The course will be open to students from multiple programs across campus, from art to architecture, mechanical engineering, outdoor industries, HHPR, and more. We are starting off with ‘Bike 1’ which will focus on steel frames and TIG welded construction.
If support builds + interest is high we hope to expand to cover more advanced topics.
I’m finishing up design of a 3D parametric frame design program that runs in Rhino / Grasshopper. I plan to share that separately here in the future, as it expands quite a bit on what BikeCad can currently do. When it’s ready for public use and distribution I plan to make it free / open-source. We’ve also been gradually developing our own frame jig, based loosely on the Chop Source jig.
As the class gets going, I will create some posts to document progress and show more images of the jigs and software. I’m looking forward to working with the community here, learning a lot, and hopefully sharing helpful resources where we can.
Thanks! Yes, the barrier to entry for frame building is pretty high… both in terms of equipment / tool costs and also in terms of skills and knowledge. I’m all for lowering the barrier to entry. We already have a lot of the specialized tools required for framebuildilng, as well as a great shop space. Thanks to a director who saw the benefits of such a program, we were able to purchase the additional tools needed last semester.
I’m also looking forward to helping students produce a frame that they will [hopefully] keep for a long time. It can be hard to get students excited about craft and building things, but the opportunity to build a bike is pretty unique. We have a great cycling culture in NW Arkansas, so I think this will be a natural fit.
