"How many hours did it take to build the frame?"

[John Clay]

Folks always ask me that. My reply is always "I have no idea". On the current Rat Trap Pass frame project I decided to keep a detailed log. With the front triangle fitted, fork built, an existing porteur being repurposed, and some tooling R&D (which sorta doesn't count against a single bike but it's identifiable), here is where it's at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/21624415@N04/42194147640/in/dateposted-public/

Roughly 50 hours so far. There is lots more to do. Folks who do this for a living need to charge more....and the customers need to cheerfully pay it! These aren't spit out of a factory.

John Clay

Tallahassee, FL

[Jon Norstog]

I figured about 40 hours for a basic frame, including paint. That's if nothing goes wrong and I don't have to do a lot of filing/sanding.  Now I'm in a, one-car garage crowded with gardening and building tools/supplies, I have extra time involved just clearing space to build frames.  Luckily, business is in the toilet.

jn

"Thursday"

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[Andrew R Stewart]

John- I’ve thought about this since my beginnings. I initially tracked my time (as well as could be what with the usual distractions in a bike shop). First few were in the 30-40 hour length. The next handful’s time went down to close to 20 hours (again, no paint). Then a funny thing happened after I had my second brief pro builder stint, my skills went up but my time spent building also went up. These days (25+ years later) my time in a frame is likely close to 60+ hours.

 

I explain this as my awareness grew and my desire to make a better frame also increased. As I learned how to do better work but didn’t have the volume to practice consistently I found the need to go slower. Andy

 

Andrew R Stewart
Rochester, New York
USA

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[David Parsons]

On Tuesday, August 14, 2018 at 3:37:01 AM UTC-7, John Clay wrote:

Folks always ask me that. My reply is always "I have no idea". 

It takes me ~30 hours/frame for one I'm going to ride (5 frames, so it's not much of a sample space) but that 30 hours is spread out over several months because I fit my framebuilding in around everything else.    My breakdown is ~3 hours futzing with the geometry on either bikecad or rattlecad, ~3 hours preparing the tubes, ~3 hours preparing lugs, ~1 hour brazing in bottle bosses and wiring ports, ~4 hours preparing the fork, ~2 hours brazing everything together, and a whole bucketload of hours cleaning the frame off for painting.

I made a frame for a friend that took about twice that, but that timing is dubious because I spent a bunch of it learning how to handle thinwall tubing with denting or creasing it.

But if anyone asks me, I'll give them clock time instead of shop time because my ability to schedule is at best a pathetic joke.

-david "I did manage to build one frame in a week clock time, but that's an exception to the rule" parsons

[Brandon Ives]

I think Andy touches on something important. Building as a professional and building as a hobby is a very very different thing.The patterns of practice are similar, but for a professional time is literally money. When I’ve built professionally thinking about how much time each step takes was very important and ROI on new fixturing is constantly calculated. When I worked on the production line at Bike Friday process improvement was key to the companies continued existence.

As a hobby builder it really doesn’t matter. I know how some single professional builders can build a frame a day, but that is completely unrelated to a hobby builder. I’ve seen plenty of hobby frames that took 100+ hours to build with the  physical results being all over the place, but the mental/emotional results in the mind of the builder were dramatically positive. I haven’t built in 7-8 years and am now in my late-40s, so I’m totally aware that I’m not going to be as fast as I was in the past and that’s OK. If the time concerns you good tooling sure help speed things up over basic fixturing.

Best,

Brandon Ives

Springfield, MO

[David Bohm]

I have taught quite a few hobbyist at this point.

 

I will say that I am much more Zen about this than many beginners or hobbyist.   If you are not doing this for a living than the speed at which you can do it is kind of immaterial.    Part of the fun of it is the doing of it and many are always in a hurry.   Timing themselves as a kind of Strava like metric of success.    I always say, the finest work is only possible by a hobbyist as a professional cannot justify endless hours at the bench.   This is the case with many hobbies but as a general rule of thumb I just haven’t seen it with framebuilding.

 

Dave

 

From: frameb...@googlegroups.com [mailto:frameb...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Brandon Ives
Sent: Wednesday, August 15, 2018 6:30 AM
To: Andrew R Stewart
Cc: Framebuilders
Subject: Re: [Frame] "How many hours did it take to build the frame?"

 

I think Andy touches on something important. Building as a professional and building as a hobby is a very very different thing.The patterns of practice are similar, but for a professional time is literally money. When I’ve built professionally thinking about how much time each step takes was very important and ROI on new fixturing is constantly calculated. When I worked on the production line at Bike Friday process improvement was key to the companies continued existence.

 

As a hobby builder it really doesn’t matter. I know how some single professional builders can build a frame a day, but that is completely unrelated to a hobby builder. I’ve seen plenty of hobby frames that took 100+ hours to build with the  physical results being all over the place, but the mental/emotional results in the mind of the builder were dramatically positive. I haven’t built in 7-8 years and am now in my late-40s, so I’m totally aware that I’m not going to be as fast as I was in the past and that’s OK. If the time concerns you good tooling sure help speed things up over basic fixturing.

Best,

Brandon Ives

Springfield, MO

 

On Aug 14, 2018, at 7:23 PM, Andrew R Stewart <onet...@earthlink.net> wrote: