The time has finally come to get our Great British Hardtail dirty, so let's look back at the process of making it and the UK-designed and/or made parts we used to build it up
This month was an exciting time for us, as we finally got the chance to put tyres to dirt aboard our Great British Hardtail. Our summer 2019 issue (MBUK 370, on sale now) tells the story of how we got on when we packed our steel-framed steed into the van and headed for the Steel City of Sheffield, for a proper shakedown on some proper ‘ard northern trails. Did it ride as we’d hoped it would? Grab a copy of the mag to find out!
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Below is a short resume of the what it’s taken to get to this point – from the design of the frame to the measuring, cutting, brazing and painting that went into making it and finally building it up into a fully rideable bike…
Ed and Tom Study from The Bicycle Academy talk through the finer points of the bike’s design. Photo: Ben Ripley
Choosing steel tubing from the enormous catalogues of different options is a complicated process, but luckily we had The Bicycle Academy to guide us. Photo: Ben Ripley
A frame in all its constituent parts. Photo: Ben Ripley
Checking the wall thickness (butted length) of our downtube using a butt-checker (yep, it’s really called that!) Photo: Ben Ripley
Mitres in the tubes were cut and filed by hand. Photo: Ben Ripley
Producing each mitre takes a lot of precise filing and offering the tube up to the frame frequently to check you’re not removing too much material. Precision here makes for a stronger bike in the long run. Photo: Ben Ripley
