This is my second try at writing this. The first draft was four pages long and included an extensive cycling, educational, and employment history. I was bored writing it, so there’s no question you guys would get really bored reading it. So, here are high points….

My passion and love for beautiful bicycles stems from when I built up an Ibis Mojo while working at Iowa Bike and Fitness in Pella, Iowa, twelve years ago. I still have and love that bike. I haven’t built myself a mountain bike out of some weird feeling I would be cheating on my poor Ibis with V-brakes and 3cm of fork travel.

I am a product of the Portland framebuilder boom. I was fresh out of college, saw what guys like Sacha White, Pereira, Ahearne, and Ira Ryan were doing and was inspired. I thought to myself, “these guys have one, two, and FOUR year waiting lists. There must be a ton of demand out there, and building a bicycle can’t be that hard, right?” I took a metalworking class at PNCA and signed myself up for the first framebuilding class I could find, which was with Steve Garn at BREW Bicycles in West Jefferson, North Carolina. Steve and his wife were amazing, and I left with a (not so beautiful) TIG’d cross frame. I came home, bought the bare essentials, registered the Argonaut trademark, and went to work. I spent a little less time blowing holes in tubes and the rear wheel actually fit in the dropouts on my second frame, so I threw some pictures up on a homemade blog and waited for the phone to ring.

I was pretty proud of myself until I went to the ‘O8 NAHBS in Portland, where it didn’t take long to figure out that I was one - really naïve, two - really inexperienced, and three - had a lot of work to do before I could call myself anything but a hack.

Between then and now I’ve made about 50 frames (ahem…..Mr. Slapshot?), work in a fully and very nicely tooled shop thanks to Mr. Newlands of the very famous Strawberry Bicycles, and have learned a few things along the way:

- Making a steel bicycle frame is actually pretty easy, but building a business around it is pretty damn hard. It isn’t any different from any other entrepreneurial venture in that it takes a ton of work, is really expensive, and most likely will fail.

- Bikes don’t sell themselves, much to my dismay, no matter how many polished stainless doodads they have, or how cool the dropouts are. Sure, it helps and people give you high fives at bike shows, but ultimately you sell bikes through reputation and good old-fashioned salesmanship.

- You can’t buy experience. Anvil jigs and mitering fixtures (hats off to Don Ferris) will only get you so far. Building a quality frame in a reasonable amount of time has just as much to do with things like heat control and brazing sequence, which just take time and experience to get good at.

I love making bicycles. It’s so much fun to select tubes, work with customers in figuring out their perfect ride, fabricate frames, and deliver a product that I’m proud of and makes people happy. Seeing a customer’s excitement upon first seeing their new bike is one of the most gratifying experiences I’ve ever had.

Having been building bicycles for about three years I’ve learned a lot and have a lot to learn. Moving forward I hope to do more contributing than gleaning from this very cool niche industry I have the fortune of participating in.

Thanks to Richard and Josh for this opportunity to sound off. This forum has been a great resource for me as a framebuilder. Some of my first customers came from here, and it is so much fun to see members post pictures of their new bikes. Feel free to ask me anything. I’ve got lots of opinions on everything from the pros and cons of stainless frames to how to properly cook a steak.