Im not trying to start to much of a rant here, although I am ranting, hopefully it leads to a good conversation and not any fighting.

I know this is not anything new, but all the new builders,frames,and tools being put out by the novice in the last several months that has been catching my eye has me thinking about it. And notice I did say novice not hobbyist, there are several hobby builders who are great builders but for there own reasons dont do it for a living.

You can go to china and walk up and down the production line and learn every job and get very skilled at every job, but does that make you a framebuilder, no it just makes you a factory worker, nothing wrong with that, I started working at GM this spring as a way to offset some of my cost of doing business I can put the dash board in a van like a champ but I cant design a vehical, and I work with a lot of great factory workers- but lets face it GM is not going to come up to any of us and ask us to work on the next design.

Now lets say you take a framebuilding class, you learn every step, you buy a mill and a fixture for everystep, you go home and follow the ABC's step by step. Are you now a framebuilder or are you just a factory production line worker- working in a one many factory.

When I see newbies with only a handfull of frames getting websites and calling themselves a framebuilder, or buying a mill or an anvil journeyman for there first frame, building tools that are meant to overcome their lack of skills instead of developing those skills, or tools that are not thought out well due to their lack of understanding of the prosess, etc. It makes me think what drives us to become a framebuilder in the first place, and why do we make the decisions we do along the path, is it a lack of understanding, do we not believe our peers when they say learn "this" first.

These kind of things always pop in my head as I contemplate my own future as a "hopeful" framebuilder. I have taken it extra slow on purpose, I have avoided taking a class to early in the process and tried to get as much guidance from other framebuilders, thanks as always to those that have helped and you know who you are. I have been contemplating taking a class recently due to the fact that the second job makes me very cramped for time- but am still a little hesitant as I dont want to start building by numbers, step1,2,3,etc and would rather develop the skills, but it is hard to do on your own without someone to look over your shoulder and give a hands on example. All this always leads to the same questions.
should I become a framebuilder, or will I be just another guy watering down the system?
what do I offer, its not like I can redesign the wheel?
why would someone buy my frame, is my style that awesome haha?

Well not sure if I really had a point to this or not, just wanted to ramble I guess