The Bicycle Academy : Cycle frame building school
A place to learn how to make bikes. You keep the skills, your first bike goes to someone who really needs it.
Hello, some of you have started making pledges on the peoplefund.it site (thank you!) but we’re still in beta testing until tomorrow when we launch at 07:00 so please wait until then to pledge so that it gets counted. Those who have pledged already please check back in the morning to see if it’s still there, it it is then you’re ok but if not please get in touch with me.
We’re super happy that so many people are so keen but please wait until tomorrow at 7am when we launch fully.
Thanks
Andrew
Here’s a great little video that explains how crowd funding works from peoplefund, remember that our campaign starts tomorrow!
We get asked this question a lot, especially as so many people are used to seeing brazed frames that are made using luggs. Well here’s a few photos of Brian’s handy work, you’ll notice that Brian doesn’t use a file to ‘dress’ his brazes, leaving them “raw” for all to see… (click on the image to see a bigger version).
Well, it’d be rude of us not to introduce ourselves wouldn’t it…
Andrew is a 29 year old mechanical design engineer with a passion for bicycles. He is the founder and chairman of the Black Canon Collective mountain bike club & trail development project, and is also the organiser of the ‘World Famous’ Cobble Wobble bicycle hill climb sprint. Andrew is the Director of The Bicycle Academy and is learning to build frames as Brian’s apprentice.
Brian is a 70 year old frame builder and brazing master who’s passionate about passing on his skills. In the 1960′s Brian was one of the country’s top motorcycle scramblers, racing frames that he built himself whilst working at Rickmans. Brian, the founder and ex-owner of Curtis Bikes (famed for their stunningly made BMX’s) will oversee and teach all frame building at The Bicycle Academy.
This week I’ve decided to share some of my inner geek; rather than indulge in some beautiful frame building imagery I thought that I’d show you a short video about some of the many books that bicycle frame builders might find useful. Remember that we’re going to have a fully stocked library at The Bicycle Academy so you won’t have to buy these yourself, we’ll share ours.
Some of you may have read about The Bicycle Academy in today’s Somerset Standard, we were very lucky to have a little article about TBA so close to the start of the crowd funding campaign and on page three of the paper…(a great spot)!
Unfortunately the article has got the most important bit of information muddled up, it says that we’re already funded by KEO, (the company behind River Cottage and Fish Fight etc) but that’s not the case, we’re trying to get funded via our crowd funding campaign on the website peoplefund.it, which has been created by KEO.
The purpose of the article was to let people know about our crowd funding campaign that starts on the 1st November so that they can get involved.
In a nutshell – we’re trying to raise enough money to start up the business by pre-selling courses and other TBA goodies over a 6 week period starting Tuesday, this is called crowd funding.
If you’re interested in finding out more please have a look here, we’re almost set for the launch and are really excited!
At 07:00am on Tuesday 1st November the brand new crowd-funding platform – www.peoplefund.it – will launch to the world featuring The Bicycle Academy and our 6 week crowd-funding campaign.
Everything that has happened up until now will come down to this; we’ll have 6 weeks to pre-sell enough course places and goodies to afford to equip the workshop so that The Bicycle Academy can open its doors, and begin teaching people and generating bikes for those in need.
We’ve worked really hard to get to this point and with your help and support we know that we can make TBA into something awesome!
The Bicycle Academy is proud to be supported by
