Our friends at the Center for Metal Arts in Johnstown, PA are hosting a bicycle frame building workshop from October 21, 2024 – November 1, 2024.

Read below for all of the details and registration info!

This course is designed to walk you through the process of fitting and brazing a bicycle frame together with an emphasis on hand tools. No prior metal working experience required. We will start at design and work our way through to a completed frame ready for paint. You will have the option to build a fillet brazed Track, Road, Gravel, Cyclocross, or Mountain bike frame (you will want parts and tires in person for this option). You will decide prior to the start of class by filling out a workshop questionnaire. This course will be a great start to picking up a torch and learning the basics of what it takes to build your own frame with something to ride when you’re done! Frame building experience is not necessary for participation.

Instructor: Jacqueline Mautner – builder, UNTITLED Cycles

My journey to frame building traces back my education in art, design and fabrication at Cooper Union. Commuting to school, I fell in love with bikes, and continued to branch out into various ways to engage the world on a bike. After I graduated and began working in the field of architecture, I realized that spending all day in an office meant that I couldn’t access my passion for fabrication, so in 2015, I moved to Portland, OR to learn the traditional method of bicycle construction called fillet brazing. With a torch in one hand, and a bronze rod in the other, I was mesmerized by the alchemy that happens when these elements come together. It’s a magical experience to melt dabs of bronze around each joint, creating a triangulated piece of steel soon to become a functional bike.

After working for a few years at Breadwinner Cycles, and with many mentors who patiently answered questions and shared words of wisdom, I was then ready to embark down a path that honors what I learned while adding my own special touch. To create the elusive “modern-masterpiece”—a goal which can so easily end in a contrived and busy assemblage of metal—is by no means an easy journey, but with practice, my vision has produced bicycles that I believe are elegant, eye-catching, and (I hope) transcendent in their ability to take their riders places they have yet to explore as well as make known routes feel new again.

Cost: $3,400

See more at Center for Metal Arts