Steel frame making.

[petgel]

Traditional steel frame building in the UK is to be placed on the Heritage Crafts "red list" meaning it's recognised as being in danger of dying out, so various initiatives are planned and a meeting is to take place between independent frame builders and Heritage Crafts.

Apparently those that have started cycling in the carbon era are unaware that steel frames have ever even existed.

I can't post a link, however it's reported on the Cycling Weekly site.

This is great news as I’m starting my frame building course with Ellis Briggs in March. I’m hoping to get to a point of selling a few…..

 

[petgel]

£208,000 turnover. Now add rent, rates, materials, energy, time for design, tooling setup, marketing, finance/admin. Suddenly it doesn't seem that much.

Turnover is different to profit.

And don’t forget about HMRC

 

[Guinessisgoodforyou]

This is great news as I’m starting my frame building course with Ellis Briggs in March. I’m hoping to get to a point of selling a few…..

In 5-7 years maybe.

 

[petgel]

In 5-7 years maybe.

I’m not from scratch. I’m an engineer and toolmaker….and as this thread goes to show there is a market. You can build and sell frames for less than 3k a time if you don’t need to earn a fortune. I’m thinking more semi retirement than high end frames at 3/4k a peice

 

[Guinessisgoodforyou]

Rourke will build you a 631 touring/road/audax frame and fork from £1100

 

[August Bicycles]

Rourke will build you a 631 touring/road/audax frame and fork from £1100

But they will also charge you £160 for brazing stainless washers around two holes drilled in the frame for Di2/EPS wiring, so I guess its swings and roundabouts!

 

[The History Man]

I’ll just leave this here……….

 

[sjcprojects]

It feels somewhat ironic that Condor moved their frame-building to Italy because they had the workers skilled in producing quality aluminium frames, rather than steel, back when aluminium was an exciting new thing. It seems a shame they've not introduced some British built steel frames into their range, but then I guess as they have everything set up in Italy (for steel as well as aluminium of course), the economics doesn't make sense.

 

[mullinino]

I'm definitely going to start building again, and I'm definitely not going to be charging the ridiculous prices of the other greedy buggers you've heard of. Good luck to Petgel above too...and don't listen to anyone that hasn't done it, I'm still riding the first frame+fork that I ever made - a lot. Every one I made after it, I sold - and the first would have been less than five weeks after mine was finished, never mind 5 years. We should all be doing it ffs, as I've said before all the info is out there to baby anyone through it, it's not difficult and it's silly-satisfying too.
p.s. Cheers THM.....again!

 

[August Bicycles]

I'm definitely going to start building again, and I'm definitely not going to be charging the ridiculous prices of the other greedy buggers you've heard of. Good luck to Petgel above too...and don't listen to anyone that hasn't done it, I'm still riding the first frame+fork that I ever made - a lot. Every one I made after it, I sold - and the first would have been less than five weeks after mine was finished, never mind 5 years. We should all be doing it ffs, as I've said before all the info is out there to baby anyone through it, it's not difficult and it's silly-satisfying too.
p.s. Cheers THM.....again!

I guess everybody's situation is different and because of that they charge what they have to to make ends meet or what they think they are worth.

Our workshop is at our home. It was a conscious decision when we bought our house that I was likely to quit the day job and go self employed at some point, so with that in mind, we got a place with ample room for a workshop to be built, because my overheads are reasonably low, I choose to charge rates that are comparable with my outgoings. We try our best to take on all the work we can, we love doing repairs, restorations and alterations, there are plenty of great steel frames out there that with a little TLC can be perfect for peoples needs without having to commission a brand new build, it also helps keep bikes out of the skip! I have actually been informed that I charge less for some work than weekend hobbyists do, those subsidised by a day job during the week.

Obviously if you have much higher overheads, you need to charge more to break even or make profit, I mean with the cost of living these days, you'd be hard pushed to be able to rent a workshop and pay a mortgage without having to charge a hell of a lot per frame or selling a lot of them every month. Add in insurance (which is insanely expensive now), plus gas rental etc and that's a hell of a chunk to cover before making any profit to take a wage from.

I'm all for people doing stuff themselves, but when they have a full time job and are building and selling frames in their spare time at low prices, they are potentially taking work away from full time builders who are trying to pay mortgages and feed their families from their craft, this is something else that is bumping prices up.

I know all these websites are quoting £4k+ for a frames, but how many are they actually selling? Social media is a great smokescreen for making it look like you have a lot of work on, eeking out build pics of a frame over 4 or 5 weeks, I'm hearing plenty of stuff through the industry that builders are struggling, diversifying, offering frame building courses and secondary brands to try and generate additional income. That's a tough place to be for them.

What I'm trying to say (in a long-winded way!) is please don't lump us all in together. Some of us have worked really hard to not be considered "hipster tax" people. As trite as it sounds, we got into this in 2011 because we love bikes and wanted to work from home, together. That's it. We knew we would never make much money and we never tried to, we just wanted to make people's dream bikes and restore loved frames that had been thought of as forever out of commission. I'm fortunate that my wife has always been on the same wavelength and so, we've built a small but self-sufficient company that doesn't seek to keep up with what peers are charging. And yet we still have to counter assumptions about our pricing, or worse, justify why we are considerably less! How do we answer those questions without crapping on peers or undervaluing ourselves?