Bike Forums - View Single Post - Framebuilding classes in Italy

05-28-20, 02:49 PM

#22

Doug Fattic

framebuilder

Join Date: Dec 2009

Location: Niles, Michigan

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Niles, Michigan where my shop and school is located is not a place known for adventure. I'm just north of Interstate 80 (the PA, OH, IN toll road). However I sometimes teach short framebuilding classes on a college campus near Kiev, Ukraine. We build bicycles for charity there. They have decent dorm rooms with good food in the cafeteria. I’ve had students come from Ireland and the UK (where they already had taken a class – one from Yates and the other from the Bicycle Academy) and also Germany and Israel. Some of them took back one of the fixtures I have laser cut and etched out of stainless steel in Ukraine. However the "off season" is cold in Ukraine. It has a climate similar to Michigan so that wouldn't encourage exploring around. Kiev is a very interesting city. Usually I go in the summer or early fall but the coronavirus has put a temporary halt to overseas travel so my next trip will probably be late fall if things are reasonably safe by then.

Taking a 1, 2 or 3 week frame building class puts a lot of pressure on getting enough information to competently make #2 . This means that the instruction has to be sharp with good presentations and demonstrations well organized to cram it all in. There is an awful lot to learn. Sometimes a student just wants to make a decent frame in class and doesn’t mind the instructor helping out more to reduce their learning requirements. And everything doesn’t have to be done in one class or at one school. I get a lot of students that have already taken a class somewhere else. Or come back again.

If I was looking for a European experience with the bonus that the whole trip is a tax write off, I would choose one of the schools in the UK. They are going to be better organized for beginner instruction than a master showing how it is done. Knowing common beginner mistakes and how to correct them really shortens the learning curve.

And now a comment to those reading this subject thread in the future that, unlike the OP, are wanting to travel as little as possible to learn framebuilding (the most common determining factor on school choice). Don’t base your decision on location if you have serious long-range goals. Instead find the best possible teacher where ever they are. I think it might commonly be underestimated how difficult learning to build a good quality frame can be. It isn’t just the volume of information required but also the challenge of developing adequate hand skills. It is easy to get really frustrated and/or discouraged while attempting to conquer both. Student work often reflects the quality presented and expected by their teacher so it just makes sense to prioritize finding a really good one rather than trying to save on travel expenses.

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