Rohloff/Gates Bike Frame Building Course - 5 Days
Build your own frame!!!
Frame Building Course: Fillet Brazed (without lugs)
Build your own frame!!!
In this 5 day frame building course you will:
* learn the technique of fillet brazing tubes together
* help to design the frame geometry to fit your riding style and size
* cut the tubes, file, and braze them together
* at the end you will have built your own custom fillet brazed frame that you can be proud of and enjoy for years to come!
Fillet. Brazed. Frames.
If you like you frame clean and simple, and less is more, this is the course for you. The tubes will be brazed together with brass, without any extra pieces (lugs) connecting them. When done well, this type of connection is very strong over time because stresses from riding are well distributed. If anything fails, it won’t be the joint.
Fillet brazed frames don’t need lugs to join the tubes. This means the frame geometry is not limited to the lugs that are available. Any type of frame, with any kind of geometry, can be built with this technique, including mountain bikes.
I like fillet brazed frames because the focus lies on the form of the frame. Fillet brazed frames are simple and beautiful, and without the visible bead of a welded frame, they appear to be a single piece of steel as one tube blends into the next. You won’t find a fillet brazed frame in the bike shop down your street.
![DSC_2481](https://bigforestframeworks.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/DSC_2481.jpg)
It could be yours.
This is what you get.
1. Time and Place
The Fillet Brazed Frame Building Course lasts 5 days. The course takes place in my workshop in Potsdam-Babelsberg (only 30 minutes from Berlin via the S-Bahn). Please send me a message to enquire about course dates. There are a maximum of e students.
2. Possible Bikes
In the Fillet Brazed Frame Building Course you can build a road bike, singlespeed, cyclocross, gravel, trekking or mountain bike. Any geometry is possible. A Rohloff rear hub, Pinion Transmission, and a Gates belt drive are all possible. The frames can be built for rim or disc brakes. You can drill as many holes for water bottle mounts as you like!
3. Difficulty
A fillet brazed frame is more challenging to build than one with lugs. Brazing in particular is a bit more difficult without lugs as it requires you to work more carefully with the torch than needed with a lugged frame. Still, most people do choose to first build a fillet brazed frame. Around 90% of our course participants build fillet brazed frames, and most of them are building their first frame.
4. What you do
Everything. Some frame building courses concentrate more on the theory. In some courses tubes are already cut before you get there. In my opinion cutting and brazing is the bread and butter of frame building. In my courses, under my direction, you will build the frame completely by yourself.
5. What I do
I have all the tools you’ll need to build your frame, plus thousands of hours of experience building pretty much every kind of bike you can think of. Working together, you can build your own frame that you will go home happy with.
6. Extras
Material costs are not included in the course fees. The material cost can vary quite a bit from frame to frame. The typical material cost for a fillet brazed frame is around 350 – 700 Euro.
Happy Faces. Beautiful Bikes.
![enduro-rahmenbaukurs-562](https://bigforestframeworks.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/enduro-rahmenbaukurs-562.jpg)
Daniel Helbig.
“Thanks for the awesome week! The frame building course was awesome, I can’t think of a better way to spend my vacation. The ‘work’ was really fun and I learned a ton. I’m really happy with how the frame turned out, and super proud that I actually built it myself. The geometry fits me perfectly and rides even better than I could have imagined!”
![rahmenbaukurs-542](https://bigforestframeworks.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/rahmenbaukurs-542.jpg)
Olaf Kopp.
“Thanks again for the awesome week! The course was really fun and I am really proud of the frame I built. I think you are a great teacher. Always patient, you explained everything really well, and the ‘work’ of building the frame was never really like ‘work’ and I had a great time! :-)”
![gemufftes-rahmenbaukurs-365](https://bigforestframeworks.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/gemufftes-rahmenbaukurs-365.jpg)
Wolf Kansteiner.
“Sorry for bothering you with pictures from my bike. I tested it today for the first time and it was fantastic. I usually do not tend to be super-enthusiastic and there were of course some minor issues (like getting the position of the saddle right etc) but this was by far the most convincing test-ride ever. Super stable, yet agile, very direct. I loved every second with it.”
![rahmenbaukurs-randoneur-1024x469](https://bigforestframeworks.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/rahmenbaukurs-randoneur-1024x469.jpg)