Methodology

My philosophy is this: a great framebuilder fucking listens. Sure, it’s a little profane, but the emphasis is important. I can talk until I’m blue in the face, but if I never shut up and listen to you or what you’re looking for in a bike, I’m never going to be able to make you happy. So when you decide you want a frame from me, the first thing we do is have a conversation — I ask questions, I listen, I write a lot of notes. When you give me the deposit and your body measurements, I will have put myself in a position to design you a frame that will perform to your specifications.

Then I pull that design together and send you a copy of the blueprint. Once you approve, the design is set in stone, and I proceed to acquire the components, I set up the fixture, and I start cutting and brazing tubing. The methods are similar to what you’d see in a workshop 50 or 75 years ago — mitering tubes with hand files, prepping tube surfaces with sandpaper, using a fixture in lieu of a granite slab to ensure that everything is assembled in such a way as to make the frame as straight as possible.

Clean-up comes next — and whether it’s cleaning the shorelines on lugs with needle files, or working away at the fillets with files and strips of sandpaper — this part matters more than you’d think. If it doesn’t look good before paint, it’s definitely not going to look good afterward. And so I spend hours that usually leave my eyes hurting and my fingers bleeding to ensure that before it rolls through the door at the painter that the steel is free of any sort of leftover flux, silver/bronze, or the tiniest bit of corrosion, and that the fillets are smooth both to the touch and the eye.

Once it’s back from the painter, I go over it again, this time to tap the threads in case any paint got on them in the process, and to make the final clean-up on the frame, including laying an application of T-9 corrosion protectant inside the tubes and a teflon-based wax of the exterior. If your bike includes a build kit, I assemble the bike at this point.

If you’re in southern Minnesota, I’m likely to hand-deliver the frame. If you’re not, I package it (carefully!) for shipping and get it out the door.