Bicycle frame building

G

Gobd

Veteran X
Do any of you guys hgave experience in this are? I'm going to build a unicycle frame as my senior project and want advice. This is of course not where i'm getting my real advice but someone might help here. What type of metal would be good? So far I've found Reynolds "531" tubing (or any oter reynolds), chromoly, 5% Nickel Case-Hardening Steel, Nickel Chrome Case-Hardening Steel, or Nickel Chrome Steel. thx for the help! :bouncy:

whatever metal has to be able to be welded or brazed with mig, tig, arc, or acetylne welding. :sunny::sunny::sunny:
 
woah, a unicycle is not a bicycle


and i suggest taking the front of a bicycle and "building" it until it separates from the rest of it

BAM

unicycle city, baby
 
dont know how expensive it would be, but aluminum seems to be pretty popular... making a frame'll be pretty tough, good luck with that. (i'm restoring my '59 dodge coronet!)
 
thats cheating. no one has unicycle building experience so i thought i'd generalize. it's the same idea. i want to build it myself and possible kill myself trying to ride the home built creation like i ride my store bought one.
 
noone will be able to tell you cheated if you put weezer stickers all over it

and do you go to fucking mime state university?

who builds unicycles in order to graduate

lol
 
i could maybe hook you up with a friend of mine that makes bike frames.

he makes 'sofa king' frames. pretty high dollar. really light. mtn hardtail and road bikes.
he'd prolly give you some pointers...?
 
nolt that would be awesome. there is a shop in seattle that builds there own frames but i haven't had time to go there yet and don't know if they'd even want to help a highscooler.

mangle-me-elmo we have this thing called a senior project here in washington. I can do whatever i want and i want to build a unicycle frame.
 
if i could somehow spend fourty hours researching and building that i would have done that. thos are so much fun to build.
 
frame building is both art and science... if you're just doing a simple project, I suggest copying existing plans of some sort, or at least following a basic already established design. Who's welding this thing? Stick w/ simple cro-mo, you don't need any fancy expensive tubing for a simple project like this. Aluminum is a bitch to weld well, so don't even bother w/ it.
 
i'm welding it myself. 1 vote for chro-mo. thats probably what i'll go with anyyways just want to search for other options. do you know where i could see prices for simple chromoly tubing not in bulk. i don't want 2000 pounds of it, just maybe 5 feet of tubing
 
while chrome is gunna be a big heavier than aluminum i hear its a hell of a lot easier to work with
 
That could be difficult. Ask around at welding supply stores and/or any metal type shops (metal supply might have scraps, or a machine shop). You're basically doing the equivalent of a 10 year old hitting up a lumber yard for a scrap of plywood to build a skateboard ramp; only more advanced ;)

Don't mess w/ anything expensive (unless you're an expert welder somehow). Its just a project. Oh, get extra material too for when (not if) you fuck up or need to tweak things a bit.

I assume you have access to pipe cutting / bending / joining equipment... if not, you *could* use square tubing and a chop-saw to get a crude frame built (unicycle anyways; bike is going to require a minimum of two short pieces of round tubing, for the bottom bracket and head tubes - plus, w/o a frame jig whatever bike frame you build is going to be horribly misaligned, and ride like complete and total ass ;) ).
 
thanks for the suggestion on where to buy. i figured not buying in bulk would be a problem. they have a few welding/machine shops down in the industrial area i'll ask around at on monday. my favourite one has a "do not look into the arc" sign on the door :) whenever it's open i always check out the arc welding anyways, from that far away it's fine.

yes i have all the tools needed to do this at my highschool metalshop. a unicycle is just perfectly flat so it' not that complicated, just lay out the metals on the welding area as it's perfectly flat.

i'm off to sleep now. keep on making suggestions if you've got any.
 
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I don't think most of these people know much about metal.

Unless you plan on doing crazy shit with this thing, standard HREW tube will be plenty. Hell, you could make it out of pipe if you wanted. If you want it to be lighter and stronger, use chrome-moly tube...you'll pay a lot more though.

HREW can be mig welded. You could probably do that yourself if you borrowed a welder. Chrome-moly will need to be TIG welded. A lot harder...you'll need to pay someone to do this.
 
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