rodar y rodar, yes, that was me. I'm having a great time, learning a lot, and I think I'm actually impressing my "mentor"...supposedly a notoriously cranky guy, but this week he gave me accolades for (a) the file work on my fork crown ("How'd you get it so flat?"), (b) the thinning work I did on my lugs, and (c) my torchwork. Made me feel OK about my progress. I take him a 4 pack of good Belgian beer every couple of weeks, so perhaps that's helping. Anyway, to the original poster, I would suggest giving your local framebuilder a call and see if you can work something out. I do one evening a week, for a couple of hours. I paid for all materials and provide my own silver (I never realized how expensive it was...) and flux, and I've bought myself a set of good files and some emery cloth so I can do "homework" -- this week, it's cleaning the flux off the fork and the BB and doing some filing. On top of that, I pay him $15/hr for his time, which really is a great deal, all things considered. I'll probably end up having spent under $1000 for a great frame and 1 on 1 tutoring throughout the process. I'm already thinking about building my next frame...

Doug, cool story, and I really respect your pursuit of the education aspects of framebuilding. I'm a high school teacher; I teach English and Computer Science (long story, but I'm certified in both and then some), but I did a little show and tell with the Materials class in Tech Ed, and a bunch of the students were really enthralled with the creative aspects of framebuilding. Unfortunately, the HS where I teach really doesn't have any metalworking capabilities, so there probably won't be students building bike frames anytime soon.