Course Provider: Downland Cycles ltd
Contact Name: Julie Jackson
Telephone: 01227 709706
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Contact course provider
Address:
2 Stone Cottages
Lynsore Bottom
Upper Hardres
Canterbury
Kent
CT4 6EG
Course Length: 6 Days
Price: 1050.00
Prices include VAT
5 star rating, 4 reviewers.
Gift vouchers available
Course Start Dates
Course dates are flexible; please get in touch for the next
available date.
Description:
Stay with us in rural Kent and learn how to build your own cycle
frame in beautiful and peaceful surroundings.
Bryan will teach you how to design, mitre, braze and tig weld your
own frame to take with you at the end of the course.
You then send to be sprayed and build up at home or return to build
with us here. Then all you have to do is ride it away.
What will you build perhaps a racing bike or a tourer, a hub gears,
derailleur or bike or electronic. Maybe you want to build a
mountain bike or BMX, a Childs bike or Fat Bike. How about a Fixie
or a step through town bike, maybe something urban and fun like a
Gravel Racer. To be riding your own hand-built bicycle frame is
what we promise when you enrol in our course.
No experience is necessary we will teach encourage you and show you
how.
Stay with us in our bunkhouse and immerse yourself in the course
with home cooked food to sustain you, hit the trails or roads to
refresh and then back in for a few hours before sleep. For this
extra cost you have all your meals home cooked, locally sourced and
home grown. There are local B&B's and Canterbury is just 6
miles away if you prefer your own space.
Our workshops are purpose built in stunning countryside, with a
free supply of tea, coffee, biscuits, cake and lunch and 2 springer
spaniels begging nicely for the odd crumb!!
What's included in the price?
Course fees include VAT, practice consumables and materials,
drinks, biscuits, cakes and lunch. Use of all facilities and
parking.
Additional costs are own frame tubing which varies depending on
what you decide to build and the tubing you choose (from 200) and
accommodation on or off site (from 38 per night).
All student reviews for this course provider
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A fellow cyclist passed me on my commute to work this week and
called out, I like your bike!” Thanks very much, I made it myself,”
I called back, bursting with pride. It left me smiling for the rest
of the day.
I was persuaded to make my own frame at the 2014 Bespoked frame
building show, by Julie, the co-owner of Downland Cycles. My
husband had built his own frame with them earlier that year and
enjoyed the experience enormously but he was used to working with
tools and had been interested in cycling all his life. To be honest
I was pretty underwhelmed when he returned home after 11 days away
with his unpainted frame.
I had minimal experience with hand tools, cycled a fair bit but
knew nothing about bicycle construction and had never considered
making my own bike. My light road bike is only suitable for tarmac,
so I had been hankering after a bike suitable for everyday use,
like shopping but which would also cope with a day on off-road
terrain. So, I plucked up the courage to make my own bicycle frame
but without truly understanding what this entailed.
Bryan, Julie’s husband, led my course and there was one other
participant. Bryan is very patient and experienced and knows when
to leave you to find you own way and when to step in to help. The
course started by discussing the design of my bicycle. Then I was
measured up on a bike-fitting jig and the measurements entered into
a bicycle CAD programme and small modifications made to ensure that
the design would translate into a finished bicycle that would work
safely in real life. We had instruction on the workshop
environment, the tools that we were to use and the tubing available
to make the frame.
Very quickly I was onto the practical stuff and allocated a
workbench to start the fabrication of a miniature practice frame. I
was taught the techniques needed to measure, cut, file down and
mitre (shape) the ends of the tubes so they fitted snugly together
into a mini bicycle frame ready for brazing (a type of welding
using brass rod and oxyacetylene welding equipment). Once the tubes
were ready, the brazing began. Never