You will occasionally see someone go from being in your position to making a living at framebuilding, so it can be done. If you choose to try, good luck.

I think anyone that wants to get into any business should go to one of the small business incubator classes. I think you'll find that your calculations are pretty far off. There is always a bill to pay. A manufacturing rule of thumb that seems to be a constant is that if you can't sell an item for 4-5 times what it costs to make it, you are not going to stay in business long-term. Sure, it looks like pure profit, but it isn't, and you should be able to pay yourself. The main issue is your assumption that the market is growing. It may be, it may not be. All I can say is there seems to have been a shakeout of builders that weren't selling that many frames and not nearly as many new builders that are being pressured into going into business by their friends. One experience I have had many times is telling people that you are starting a business building frames, and they say "I want to learn how to build frames." Never seemed real promising.

There has been a lot of discussion about this, but it seems to me that there is a pretty significant investment up front, at least the way I want to do things. The people I've known that went to UBI spent years before they were making a living at it. I'm not sure I would have ever really gotten competent enough to build frames to sell if I hadn't gone to work at Trek. Those types of opportunities are pretty much gone. If there are 5 apprentices working in this country I'd be surprised. Most people that stick with it can become competent framebuilders, but there are some that never get that good or are horrible at business and are out there scaring off your potential customers. Warms my heart.

I got revved up to go into business a couple years ago, and then I got some work opportunities that made framebuilding look a lot less attractive, at least in the short term. There are a lot of details to work out, even if you are skilled at building frames. I decided I didn't want to throw any more money at the problem right now. The main issue for me is that if you start selling frames, you effectively are saddled with insurance payments for the life of those frames. The way I see it, the present value of those insurance payments is a significant pile of cash. To make that kind of commitment with no guarantee of success just made me rethink the whole thing. I still intend to sell frames, but I have to get over that hurdle somehow.

I think it takes most people a while before they can build a frame they would be happy with in a week. You also have to sell the frames. It's not easy.