...making a bicycle frame, the first cut!

Hello again,

today I have in mind a very beautiful and intense sentence:

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step"

Laozi

I would like to show you the first step of framebuilding, like many things we make often we have to make a very first step.
Mine is usually the bottom bracket cutout.

Maybe it is not so clear what is it. It is one of the most important parts of a bicycle frame. It is where the crankset and the pedal work. It is the centre where all the power of our legs is going. The cutout is very useful in steel bicycle frame to prevent inner oxidation because of the natural condensation of the humidity of the air between the inner temperature and the outside one.

It would be enough a simple drilled hole, but in the bicycle making tradition in past it was common and it is still common to make there your own logo. That's why I am doing it.

This is totally handmade and now I will show you how I make it.
First of all I draw it with cad on paper.

Then I hammer all the vertexes with a kind of burin to mark all the points to drill.

Then I drill them 3mm.

After that is enough to cut all the rest and file it carefully.

It takes a while to do it, I like it, I concentrate and I think about the bike I am going to make. I consider it the first step of a big journey.

Maybe one day someone of you would like a steel handmade bicycle frame made with love step by step.

Grazie mille.

All the best,

G