Another track bike - My Absolute Favourite One
No it's not very pretty...
A bit weird with a Reynolds 531 frame, but with a Columbus pista fork...
The paint is pretty boring....(even though this is it's third paint job)
but...
it was the first frame I ever built.

I remember it so well. A month before, we had been given an assignment in a 4th year engineering materials course, to devise an improvement to a common everyday item. Of course I chose a bike (Mind you in first year, we had received a similar request, but a bit sneakily, as they just said bring in something you use every day and after we did, it turned out we had prepare a design paper om how to "improve it". I had brought in a pair of my drum sticks and then was tasked with designing better ones ! I learned from that 'surprise', to chose something I felt I could improve the design of and had a lot of ideas I had been thinking about for quite a while.

For this assignment I had written about using much larger diameter tubing, with thinner walls, to build a bike frame. The hypothesis was that the frame would be lighter, yet stiffer (thus transferring more power as one peddled, especially whilst putting out more power in a sprint) ... Haha got 'em ! Great mark and I was happy !

(BTW That is how everyone builds frames now, but at the time, over 50 years ago, that was blasphemy)

Then what ? They did it yet again ! The next assignment was to actually make your improved item :-(

Panic set in, as the tubing I mused about wasn't available, anywhere, at any cost , but more importantly ... how do I build a bicycle frame ? Then I saw an opportunity and ran down to the prof's office, explaining my dilemma. Thankfully my alternative approach fell upon sympathetic ears and the prof said do what you can and explain what you learned. Thank you !!!! I would BUILD a frame and use it as a learning experience about the process and materials.

As is usual in architecture school, large assignments were always given just before a holiday, (sometimes the Friday afternoon before the long weekend, or Study week, or Christmas ... so that you always spent your time working, rather than visiting family and friends. So that year I spent many (actually wonderful) hours just before Christmas down the Bourgeois basement (that was equipped with drills, files, hacksaws and everything I needed to cut, mitre and prepare all the tubes to length and to (somewhat) seamlessly fit into each other) just in time to head back to school early, prepared tubing in hand, to use the Science Workshop, for the actual build.

Luckily, I had befriended two technicians in the science workshop, when I had researched my first paper on the materials assignment. Both had a keen interest in cycling and were excited to take me on as an apprentice, to learn how to silver and bronze braze, the main skill required to actually put together the tubes into a frame. We also devised a very crude jig, which actually was more an assembly of carefully sized steel blocks set on a very large flat plate corresponding to the difference in tube diameters, than an actual frame jig.

After some initial attempts at brazing old tubes and cut offs, I was "ready" (Okay not so much) to put a torch to the real deal.

Well it went together, but I do admit when assembling the components to finally make it into a complete bike (not the ones the frame is adorned with now, but far less expensive Sugino ones), I discovered the bottom bracket shell was a bit crooked. (Four years later and the cause of the second paint job, Hans and I removed the really cheap pressed steel bottom bracket shell and replaced it with a beautiful Cinelli sourced one)

The result was this bike and pretty darn good mark in that class, as I had prepared a 40 or 50 pages of observations, remarks and recommendations, that verified my original paper, but far more importantly started my interest in building frames, after I joined the local club once I returned back to the Sault.

As they say, "this one is a keeper".