#6, made in France

[christo]

Bonjour everybody,
after a few years of regular reading of this fantastic forum, i took a deep breathe and decided to post and submit for your comments. My name is Christophe, I leave in Lyon, France. My workshop is in the basement of my family house, at the bottom of the Grand Colombier, one of the toughest climb in France.
I am a pure hobbyist, now just starting frame #6. I learned the basics a couple of years ago, spending 2 wonderful weeks with Dave Bohm, for one of my best learning experience in my life.
Frame #1 is great, as it was done under the supervision of Monsieur Dave. With such a master looking over your shoulder and directing you, things are easy... But the tough reality appeared when i did frame #2, which is really a collection of mistakes. This bike hopefully belongs to my wife who rides it 2 miles a year (at best)
I 've build 3 other frames so far, slowly improving my technics, a lot of this improvement coming from reading this forum.

Now it's time to enter into serious things : #6 will be for my pal Fred, big guy (100kgs) who wants a road bike for gravel roads. The good news is that he is very well seated on his C'dale R700, giving me a good start for the design of the bike. After long discussions with Fred, i ended up with the following, based on RS UOS lugs and tubes :
5piR6.pdf

Now its time to burn some acetylene and cut some metal. My workshop is in the basement of an old farm from the 12th century, meaning low ceiling, bats shit and dust.
DSC_0469.jpg

I'm working on a flat iron surface, no jig. So i am relatively conservative and build sub assemblies. So here are a few pics of the first steps : tacks of the BB/ST on the table, check, brazing in the stand (by the way, am i the only one to burn the jaws of the park tool stand when braing ?), re-recheck, ...

DSC_0532.jpgDSC_0528.jpgDSC_0519.jpg

As opposed to what i've done on #2, 3 and 4 (Note to newbies and framebuilding school students : TAKE NOTES AND PICTURES!!! when you're on your own, you'll forget everything), i now drill and braze the braze-ons before assemblig the main triangle. So here it goes with my very old drill (130kg, 10mmm drill max) for the bottle bosses and the famous 121 mm from Monsieur Sachs ' derailleur tab

DSC_0537.jpgDSC_0536.jpg

I'll be honore to receive your comments. That's all for now, more to come hopefully in the coming days...
A bientot

Christophe Saint-Pierre