THE PROCESS OF GETTING A FRAME

I make steel frames and bikes one at a time. Tig welded, or fillet-brazed, with fully customised geometry and braze-ons just for you. Each frame is built to tight alignment tolerances through the welding process, has all bearing faces and threads carefully dressed with precision hand tools before painting (faced and chased), and is then sent for a clear-coat paint or powdercoat finish. Orders are being completed in 5-8 weeks with that timeframe varying a little as each frame is totally unique.

You can think of a frame-order as a collaboration to make a cutting-edge steel frame to suit you out of carefully selected combinations of light-weight steel tubing; lightweight tubing combinations that aren't used on production frames because the heavy-for-their-height customers invariably break a good percentage of them. Because I get to know your requirements, I can make a design that will work just for you. The result will weigh 5-25% less than a production steel frame, which is also a good measure of the additional spring and desireable absortion I can offer as part of the design which lets you ride longer and arrive feeling less beaten-up.

Fillet-brazed construction takes far more work and so has longer delivery times and cost more. All frames are priced painted in either two pack auto paint with clear-coat, or powdercoat, both of which I send out to the experts.

With a few emails or discussions on the phone, we can establish the type of frame or complete bike that suits your needs.

I run and update this website myself to give you a glimpse into how it all comes together.

• one of my standard designs: choose from fixie, track, 29er, mtb, road-racing, sport-road, randonneur, touring, cyclocross, 96er. and I'll recommend geometry for your frame size.
• a standard design adjusted to your saddle-to-handlebar and saddle-to-Bottom-bracket-axle measurements.
• your design that I've checked over and approved.
• a fully custom design based on your body measurements from +$150.
• a Bike Fit session with either of the following practitioners: the resulting design feeds into my build process:

  --Osteopath Dominic Briscombe of First Place Osteopathy in Melbourne: a former B-Grade road racer, Dominic uses a fully adjustable fit bike.

  --Steve Hogg of cyclefitcentre.com in Sydney who is well known and published in cyclingnews.com

Along with frame dimensions, we decide on frame tubing, frame parts and the method of constructing the frame.

If you're interested in going ahead, I use BikeCAD to display the proposed design and email it to you to check it out, along with a form to record the things you'd like. Fully custom designs require a 10% deposit at this stage before we get into the measurements for the design.

The BikeCAD drawing can also show fit-dimensions such as saddle to handlebar distance which you can use to compare with your current bike. Typical BikeCAD drawings are here,

A deposit is required and I start the build process. As part of buying one of my frames, you're welcome to come out and meet me and see where it all happens.

Once you decide to go ahead with a frame order, I ask for:

Delivery of the frame to you can be arranged for $30-$40 around Australia.

When I receive your deposit, I organise all the tubes and frame parts I need. For most frames I'll have all the parts, while some frames may need special tubes and we will be waiting about a week or two for the parts to arrive. By then you will have moved up the queue a little. Once built, the frame is 'faced and chased' then painted.

The detail - the ways you can order a frame;