There’s fillet brazing and there’s fillet brazing.

You only have to look at the wide range of results produced ‘straight out of the torch’ by tutors, builders and enthusiasts to see that some rely more heavily on the file than others to achieve a final result.

Fillet brazing is a technique that many schools shy away from because it’s notoriously difficult to master and most find it difficult to teach. Some insist that students pass an entry evaluation, or hold your hand the whole time, or insist on students taking significantly lengthened courses, or suggest that it simply isn’t possible to teach to a suitable standard; it’s just a matter of lots of practice and building up experience.

Well, there’s teaching and there’s teaching.

We get asked by lots of people how we teach our students to fillet braze to such a high standard in such a short period of time. Well we’ve got a great combination of ingredients; over 50 years of fillet brazing expertise, great equipment and materials, and we’ve got a real passion and a proven skill for teaching.

We’re proud to say that we’ve taught just under 100 novices how to fillet braze, developed the skills of award winning pro’s like Tom Donhou and are working with two famous British bicycle manufacturers to provide them with fillet brazing tuition.

So when people say “it can’t be done” that’s just because they don’t know how. We do it every day of the week.

If you’d like to learn how to fillet braze, you can book onto our Fillet Brazing Masterclass and if you’d like to learn to build frames too you can book onto our Frame Building Course (which of course includes fillet brazing tuition).

Straight Out Of The Torch #StraightOutOfTheTorch

Photo: TBA student Gareth Howell fillet brazing his first ever frame (he was a complete novice only 3 days previously).

A few blog posts ago we mentioned that we were going to be making the Morvélo City Cross trophies, well here they are!

We made 16 in total, each one a little different from the other. Can’t wait to see the photos of the winners holding theirs aloft…

On Friday we were lucky enough to visit the Brompton factory in west London with Dan from Facade Media (who took the wonderful images you see below).

Like us Brompton have a strong affiliation with the art of fillet brazing, so it was great to see their guys in action and talk techniques, fluxes and rods.

The Brompton factory is a really impressive set up, teaming with people all working away producing the iconic hand made folding bikes from start to finish. It’s awesome to see a UK bicycle company be so successful and even better knowing that they produce their bikes in this country.

Yep, having finally caught up with ourselves we’re now taking bookings for the whole of 2013 on a first come first served basis!

You can get in touch with us directly by emailing booking@thebicycleacademy.org or giving us a call on +44(0)1373 473767.

Last week we sent out the very first student made TBA Africa Bike frame.

The frame (which has now been built up into a working bicycle) is on its way to a young man in The Gambia.

The frame was hand made by Erica Smith on a Frame Building course she took with us in November, and it’s being hand delivered by her too.

We’re not far off having our first 100 student frames, at which point we’ll get them all painted and ship them out to people in need.

We’re really proud of our teaching, and we get wonderful feedback from our students, but the fact that we’re able to help others as part of this process is something that is really very special.

It won’t be long before we get some pictures of the bike being used, but we can’t wait…!

We have availability for courses right now so please get in touch if you’d like to learn how to build bicycle frames, and help someone else in the process.

We know that it takes a long time to become a true master at something.

Mitring, fillet brazing, finishing - they all take time.

Brian has been fillet brazing for over 50 years but he still practices almost every day because he’s still hungry for that perfect braze.

After seeing this graphic a lot of people asked us to make some clothing, so here you go – our small range of Practice Makes Perfect apparel – Pre-order yours now!

This is going to awesome. Really, really awesome.

Our friends at Morvélo are on fire at the moment making some great things happen. We’re making the trophies for the event and we’re also working with them on another project that Andrew dreamt up a little while ago, all very exciting.

If you haven’t entered yet you can book your place on the start line here: http://www.citycross.co.uk/enter/