Beginning Steps.

Beginning steps - deciding what you want to build.

Materials - what to use and where to get it.

Tools - a bare bones set of tools.

Modifying the fork-ends with stainless faces.

Modifying the bottom bracket shell to work with my mix of angles.

Mitering the tubes.

Soldering the main triangle.

Soldering the rear triangle.

Cleaning up the lugs. Complete with lots of pictures of the naked unpainted frame.

Making transfers.

Painting.

Addendum.

The first place to start is to subscribe to the framebuilders list, lurk for a few weeks, and then start to ask questions. There's some very knowledgeable people there, and the signal to noise ratio is very good.

For me, I was reasonably sure what I wanted to build. I've raced criteriums and road races for a few years, and have recently adapted an old road bike into a fixie - a sort of road/track mongrel with no freewheel, one fixed gear, and brakes. I figured the next logical progression was to do track racing, so the obvious frame to build is a track frame.

Sizing is very important. No bike will work well if it doesn't fit you well. I've had a number of different bikes over the years - some too big, one too small, and the more recent ones pretty much right. I had a good idea of what the top tube and seat tube dimensions should be, so only had to work everything else out before I had a design that was buildable. My advice to anyone wanting to build a first frame would be to measure what you already have carefully, and put some thought into what you'd change if you had the chance. Could you do with more length, or a faster (steeper) steering geometry? Or longer chain stays, so you don't touch them with your heels?

I wanted to do a silver soldered lugged steel frame. I like the look of lugs (except when they're overly ornate) and think it's a practical, strong way to build a frame. Also, I've never used a MIG or TIG welder before, so thought I'd stick to oxy-acetylene.

My criteria were:

High bottom bracket. Many road bikes use a 265mm bottom bracket height. As I wanted to use this on a track, I went for a bottom bracket 285mm from the ground.
55cm square frame. That means 55cm long top tube, and 55cm tall seat tube. I don't grock sloping top tubes, so made mine parallel to the ground.
Fairly steep seat and head tube angles. I went for 74 degrees parallel. Many track bikes go as steep at 76 degrees in the head tube, but I wanted to be able to use this on the road as well, so compromised.
Really short chain stays. I want a bike that sprints well; a thoroughbred. The length of my chain stays was dictated by wanting a 23mm tyre to just touch the seat tube when inserted all the way into the horizontal fork-ends.

An interesting point when designing a track frame is that the head tube ends up fairly long for a given frame size, due to the high bottom bracket.

I used a tool called BikeCAD, which is free on the web, and makes the whole job really easy. It even exports the design as a .dxf, so you can play with it further in your favorite CAD software.