JanMM

Anyone know when it became common to say 'building a bike' when what is really meant is 'getting a frame and all the parts and putting a bike together'? To me, bicycle-building brings to mind the image of a frame builder who might or might not go ahead and put all the parts and pieces on the frame. Is this just a time-saving phrase that has caught on?

bigvegan

No, building up a bike has pretty much, to my knowledge, always meant assembling the bike from its component parts.

Framebuilding is the term for building the frame from scratch with tubes (and lugs) and solder or welding.

Panthers007

I call it 'building' when someone chooses a frame (or a complete bicycle - taking off the components for another use) and takes the bare frame and adds the components that they have personally selected. Getting a box from BikesDirect full of parts pre-selected and slapping it together doesn't qualify - in my book.

Building the frame, as well, is an art unto it's own right.

jdon

Yep. But in my mind there is a difference between "building a bike" and "building up a bike" so I know where you are coming from JanMM.

Cyclist01012

Unless you are building the frame, you are not building a bike. When you just put the parts (even if you select ever one of them) on you are assemblying a bike or maybe at a long stretch building up a bike.

I think maybe this is a BF term just like bifter which I have never heard anywhere else.

BlazingPedals

I totally agree. "Building a bike" should be taken to mean building the frame, then populating it with components. If someone buys the frame and populates it with pieces and parts, that's "building up a bike." Totally different degree of skill involved.

Rod Arnold

I always say "building up a bike." But to be picky, if "building a bike" means building a frame (in truth, just one component of the total bike), why it doesn't also mean building the derailleur, the brakes, etc?

AdamDZ

New Oxford American Dictionary:

build
verb
1 they were building a tree house: construct, erect, put up, assemble; make, form, create, fashion, model, shape.
2 they are building a business strategy: establish, found, set up, institute, inaugurate, initiate.
3 the pressure was building: increase, mount, intensify, escalate, grow, rise.

Oxford English Dictionary:

1. a. trans. Orig. To construct for a dwelling; to erect (a house), make (a nest). Hence, To erect, construct (any work of masonry), and by extension, To construct by fitting together of separate parts; chiefly with reference to structures of considerable size, as a ship or boat, a carriage, an organ, a steam-engine (not, e.g. a watch or a piano). Const. of, more rarely from, out of, with (the material), on (the foundation). In early mod.Eng. used with up without change of meaning; but to build up (in literal sense) now implies a contrast with pulling down, or with a previous state of decay, as ‘to build up again’. to build a fire: to arrange or pile the fuel. to build a railroad, said in U.S., is unknown in England.

Therefore, he is building a bike

A.

Retro Grouch 

1. I agree with you.
2. Most BF posters use "alloy" as a synonym for "aluminum".
3. We may be more precise but we're gonna lose anyway so we might as well get over it.

aadhils

Well when people assemble custom PCs they also refer to it as "building" a computer.

Arcanum

Look at it this way: It wouldn't occur to most people that you could or would build a frame from scratch. If you specify that you're building the frame it sounds a lot more impressive.

JanMM

'building a bike' is already in such common usage amongst the cycling community that there's no turning back.

noglider 

If that is a picture of you, JanMM, then you've been around bikes for about as long as I have, since you're wearing a Bell Biker in the picture. Back in the 70's, putting components on a frame was called building a bike, at least in my area (NYC).

I don't think it's an abuse of the word. We "write" things with a computer, without a pen.

JohnDThompson 

Or "assembling a bike." But that doesn't sound nearly as exotic as "building a bike." Even WalMart "assembles" bikes.

JanMM

Yes, that's me on a bridge over the Hudson near Pughkeepsie in 1981.............You've told me what I was interested in hearing - that folks have been saying 'building a bike' for quite a while.
A long history of popular usage confirms the status of an expression as 'correct'.

Retro Grouch 

To me "build" = "fabricate". Bolting things together that were fabricated by somebody else is "assembling".

AdamDZ

So building a house is actually "assembling" according to you, since all the bricks were already made by someone else?

A.

JanMM

"assembling" makes sense for modular homes, or homes 'built' with prebuilt wall systems or roof trusses, etc.

noglider 

Exactly. It's all relative. I say I make my own coffee, because I grind the beans myself. Some roast their own beans. I suppose some GROW their own beans. And so on.

JohnDThompson 

I think the phrase "custom built bike" to refer to selecting particular components to use on an off-the-peg frame bothers me more than the phrase "building a bike." To me a custom built bike includes a custom built frame, designed to the rider's particular requirements.

stapfam

Go back a few years and Most frames were Steel. I used to manufacture Karts (Go-Karts) I can weld but I designed- bought the tubing- Bend them to shape and tacked together for a better welder than I am to do a professional job. Sure I can weld but I knew people that could do it better. Then Aluminium came along and in the early days Ally welding took some special equipment. I did not have it.

Now transfer over to Bikes with Ti- That takes an expert to stick together.

I also used to be a fibre glass laminator building 30ft cabin cruisers- but there is no way that I could build a C.F.Frame.

I dare say that I could get hold of some lightweight Steel tubing- and then copy someone elses design on the critical geometry parts and build a frame.

Why?

Frames are cheap- they are a component of a bike and it does not matter what material it is made of. I do not have the bike design skills and I know there are better welders around than me.

So I do a custom build on a frame and forks assy that I buy. I then build the parts around that frame with carefull selection of what I know works and is compatable with my wallet.

Garfield Cat

How about "building a home"? Does it mean that I am the architect, the soil engineer, and all the subcontractors? Maybe not. Lennar is a home builder and KB Homes. I bet most of their work is sub contracted out. They just package the thing together.

AdamDZ

To me "to assemble" means to put together something that is already partially built, where all the parts are already picked and matched up, such as bike that comes in a box, speakers+stands, IKEA furniture, etc. A bike frame is just a part, it may be the most important part that dictates the choice of other parts and give the bike its style and function, but it's just a part: in itself it can't do anything. So using "build" seems perfectly fine to me when applied to putting together a bike from a frame. You have to pick the parts, match up the components, do some designing, it's not just simple "assembly".

Adam

jputnam

"Build a bike" meaning assemble a bike from the frame up was certainly in use by the 1970s bike boom.

If you meant brazing up the frame yourself, you'd say "build a frame" rather than "build a bike." e.g. Talbot's classic Designing and Building Your Own Frameset: An Illustrated Guide for the Amateur Bicycle Builder.