Nobody buys a photograph of a frame.
They buy seven numbers and a promise about how it will feel at sixty kilometres. So this page is the numbers, and every one of them is yours to move.
Join the listConcept work — fictional brand, built to demonstrate technique. Nothing is for sale.
The shop
- 18
- Frames a year
- 0.3 mm
- Alignment tolerance
- 650 °C
- Silver braze
- 7 mo
- Current wait
Why the fit matters
A frame is the only thing you own that is built around your own body and then has to last twenty years without being adjustable. Get the fit wrong by ten millimetres and you will feel it every single ride, and no component you bolt to it afterwards will fix it.
Start with the body, not the bike
Two measurements decide almost everything. Move them. The drawing is not a picture of a frame in a catalogue — it is being rebuilt underneath you, and the seat post grows and shrinks because your saddle height is a number and not a preference.
Saddle height is inseam × 0.883, measured from the centre of the bottom bracket to the top of the saddle. It is a hundred-year-old rule of thumb and it is right to within about five millimetres for almost everybody.
- Size
- M
- Seat tube
- 546 mm
- Saddle height
- 742 mm
- Standover
- 826 mm
Now argue about the angles
Three numbers and the bike becomes a different bike. Trail is computed from the head angle and the fork offset and is the single best predictor of how a frame steers — under 50 mm it is quick and nervous, over 65 mm it tracks straight and resists being turned. The dot moves as you do.
Start from
- Trail
- 58 mm
- Wheelbase
- 993 mm
- Standover
- 822 mm
The joint is the whole job
A tube meeting another tube does not cut square — it cuts as a saddle, a curve in three dimensions that is different for every angle and every pair of diameters. Get it wrong by two tenths of a millimetre and the joint is a gap full of brass. Scroll to cut one and braze it.
- Step 1
The cut. The end of the down tube is a saddle curve, not a circle — its shape comes from the head tube it has to sit against and the angle it meets it at.
- Step 2
Six hundred and fifty degrees. Silver flows at a lower temperature than brass and pulls itself into the joint by capillary action, which is why the gap has to be four hundredths of a millimetre.
- Step 3
Cooled, and the fillet is filed back until the joint looks like the tube grew that way. This is about two hours per joint and it is most of what you are paying for.
What it is made of
Every tube here is butted — thicker at the ends where the heat and the load go, thinner in the middle where neither does. The section below is drawn to scale, so the difference between a workhorse and a featherweight is a tenth of a millimetre you can see.
Frame weight
1.98 kg
+290 g on the lightest
On the frame price
included
The default, and what most of these frames are. Forgiving to braze, unbothered by winter, and cheap enough to be worth repairing after an argument with a car.
| Tube set | Wall, end | Wall, centre | Frame weight | Extra |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CS-4 cromoly | 0.9 mm | 0.6 mm | 1980 g | included |
| CS-7 air-hardening | 0.8 mm | 0.5 mm | 1760 g | £340 |
| CS-6 oversize | 0.7 mm | 0.45 mm | 1690 g | £210 |
| CS-9 stainless | 0.7 mm | 0.4 mm | 1840 g | £1150 |
And then the part everyone actually chooses on
Six weeks of measuring and mitring, and every single customer spends longer on this section than on the other three put together. We have stopped pretending to mind.
Colour
A contrasting head tube is the oldest trick in frame painting and still the cheapest way to make a bike look like somebody chose it.
What it costs and how long you wait
The wait is the honest part of the price. There is one of me, a frame takes about fifty hours of bench time, and I will not take a deposit for a slot I cannot see from here.
- Frame only
- CS-4
- 38 hours
- £2,450
- Frame and fork
- CS-4
- 52 hours
- £3,100
- Frame and fork, air-hardening
- CS-7
- 54 hours
- £3,440
- Stainless, frame and fork
- CS-9
- 71 hours
- £4,600
- Repair, replace one tube
- any
- 9 hours
- £520
- Cold-set and realign only
- —
- 3 hours
- £180
Before the first email
Send me your inseam before you send me a mood board
Every conversation that went wrong started with a picture of somebody else’s bike. Every one that went right started with two measurements and an honest answer about how far you actually ride. The drawing above is already most of a first email.
Start with the numbersConcept work — fictional brand, built to demonstrate technique. Nothing is for sale.
The frame in the hero: 388 reach, 570 stack, 73° head, 410 chainstay, 58 mm trail, 993 mm wheelbase.