In 2011 during the height of my fixed gear/single speed bike interest I stumbled upon some images on the internet of what appeared to be a one on one style frame building program. The school was in Rifle, Colorado and taught by the legendary frame builder Koichi Yamaguchi. In time I rolled around the the idea of saving money to attend the not so cheap class at some point. My interest in hand built (particularly lugged bikes) was super high and I seriously contemplated the thought. At the time I was riding a Japanese track bike that was just as fun to ride as it was beautiful to look at as I knew that one day I would want to build at least one for myself. Though I considered the merits and was probably better off then taking the class than I am now, I did not go through with it and moved forward with my many other bike related interests.
I now fast forward 7 years to the last night of Summer of 18 as I pack my finished frame and fork into the trunk of my friends car before leaving little Rifle Colorado. It finally, actually, oddly enough happened as I am back in town now reflecting on what passed. I was unbelievably fortunate enough to have help with this trip from my friend Jim, without which I would not have been able to do. I learned some amazingly useful skills and techniques, made new friends (Ken/Koichi/Barbra), learned interesting history, went on beautiful rides, had a great roommate/traveling partner and built a bicycle frame.
The following is a short recollection of my thoughts that pertain more to the actually experience and composition of the school than a log of the steps, days and progress regarding curriculum. This write up is more about Koichi Yamaguchi as a person, his philosophy and attitudes towards frame building, the bicycle industry, automation, and the experience of learning about these things from a person with such a concise understanding and steeped background of bicycles.
Yamaguchi
Koichi, as I would call him him throughout the duration of my trip, is a fairly reserved man. Generally quiet and massively down to earth are attributes that anyone would immediately pick up on. His demeanor is calm, his appearance modest and his tone confident yet humble. When it comes to bikes the guy has done it all. A list of his accolades would necessitate a separate tangential blog post that I am not interested in writing, but in short his direct experience spans continents and composes decades. From spearheading the trajectory of the legendary 3rensho company to designing and building USA Olympic and world champion yielding bikes; Koichi may be the winning-most, still practicing frame builder in the world (someone step in here). Not that numbers are everything by any means, his track record (pun intended) at 3rensho alone eclipsed 4 thousand frames. He single highhandedly taught the true temper tubing company how to specially form radical tapered, s-bent tube sets, lays claim to developing the highly used and still revered Serotta fit-bike and has been the secret builder behind custom one-off race bikes displaying decals that misleadingly advertise Huffy, Serotta, Raleigh etc. After all the racing dust settled Koichi and his partner Barbra relocated to Rifle, Co from Colorado Springs and began teaching the Yamaguchi frame building school in 2008.
Koichi is a very friendly, yet ultra direct and to the point kind of person. As I would discover during day one, his style of teaching allows students to ask questions that reveal their own varying levels of interest. Though he of course shares any and all information necessary to moving forward with class and progressing along with the steps involved with frame building, he particularly comes into his own when you start asking questions and dropping hints at things. The more you show curiosity the more he opens up and begins revealing bits about his past, ideas regarding his approaches to things and the history behind his practice. He was more than happy to talk about his disenchantment with the UCI (one of cycling's biggest race organizing body's), failures and successes with frame building techniques, love and hate relationship with the industry and overall fondness for the simplicity that is the bicycle. He never hesitated whatsoever to discuss his reasons for doing things in certain ways, be it traditional or exploratory in nature. His willingness to elaborate upon request was almost to the determent of the class's forward motion at times; something I am happy to take some credit for perpetuating.
Class
The Yamaguchi frame building school as well as cicycle frame building technique has been heavily documented via forums and tutorial videos to the degree that I don't find it necessary to do any sort of full breakdown of the practices employed in Koichi's curriculum. Suffice it to say that we thoroughly traversed the full gamut of frame building technique. What I am interested in talking about with regard to class is the nature of it all. Hand-everything was the reoccurring theme in our steps along the way. Often Koichi would go into great depth about how frames fail,
what makes the fail and how to avoid such shortcomings by build a strong, lightweight and long
lasting bike. Nearly every aspect of the frame building course was hand done. Miters were hand filed, blue prints were hand drawn, bronze was hand sanded and all brazing was done by us after practice and instruction. Koichi's aim was to sufficiently demonstrate before allowing us to practice and make our own mistakes, but of course never at the expense of destroying our bicycle frames or forks. His emphasis on doing things primarily by hand was not just an iconoclastic approach to building, but a necessary measure in maintaining quality control and keeping things to a one step/one hand at a time basis. It is mostly for the sake of joy that he still hand cuts and files tubing himself for custom builds.
