Ceeway offers newbie kits starting at $157 usd, including the flux, rod, and shipping.

That is a good deal.

Haha, Thanks. I think every forum has people like that, not that there is anything wrong with it, and I'm sure I have been guilty of myself. I just wanted to make sure that people didn't think I was trying to talk bad about their business or say it was some sort of a scam.

That's the base kit with stamped lugs and no fork, right?

At current exchange rates the kit is $214 with fork and cast lugs options added.

And a bit more for double butted tubing.

Here is the link https://www.ceeway.com/Tubeandpartsbundle.htm in the case that someone can't find it.

Since I've built a large number of frames with pressed lugs, and most of the most desirable collectible frames were built with pressed lugs, I'd just like to say I don't see anything wrong with them. And this goes double for something that you are building for experience. Sure, it is a project to make them look presentable, but those are useful skills anyway.

I haven't decided whether or not to do a little work on the lugs or just leave them, but like you said it would be good experience.

"maybe I phrased my question poorly which led to a misinterpretation"

Yep, and maybe I misinterpretated
many I know of got started by getting old bent frames and pulled them apart for cheap practice materials
learning to clean out lugs, cut the tubes down, learning to close gaps up in lugs and rebrazing the joint test pieces and cutting open, it only costs one the price of consumables.
Make a whole batch up on a weekend and braze them all in one go for best feed back on technique.
Not one ech week
but five to ten joints/lugs in one sitting
Ciao
and

anyone that wants to practice brazing should get some 4130 1 1/8" .038 wall, and some 1 1/4" .058 wall**. Cut the 1 1/4" up into short pieces and put one of them on a length of 1 1/8" and braze them together. Do that until you can get the braze to flow out the other side without any drama. No need to buy bike parts for that.

**sizes are for illustration, buy the next larger size in .058 wall and it has the perfect gap for brazing.

anyone that wants to practice brazing should get some 4130 1 1/8" .038 wall, and some 1 1/4" .058 wall**. Cut the 1 1/4" up into short pieces and put one of them on a length of 1 1/8" and braze them together. Do that until you can get the braze to flow out the other side without any drama. No need to buy bike parts for that.

**sizes are for illustration, buy the next larger size in .058 wall and it has the perfect gap for brazing.

I've heard of people talking about taking old frames apart to do this. I have managed to save up a few bikes, but didn't know how to start when taking them apart. I'm guessing just heating them up and pulling them out with a wrench? I want to start on this first thing tomorrow morning when I get out of work, spending a day taking them apart then like you said do a run of brazing them all which would be an excellent way to learn.

But, is that the right way of taking them apart? I can't think of any other way that would be practical.

Thank You.

being somewhat new to all of these and having made about 10 bikes with products from both HJ and Nova, I am starting to digest the prices. Actually, that isn't true. As I am very familiar with buy metal locally, the prices arent bad at all. But the shipping, and this falls under demand as do the prices, for canadians, is hard to swallow. I have paid nearly 50$ on a 200$ order, you bend a stay wrong or whatever, and your build just jumped another 50 bucks to get a set of stays and shipped. This is where it gets really painful for the small time builders, because I am not going to order 2 or 3 more frame sets in a guessing game of what will come next. That said, at my amount of building, it is called a hobby, and hobbies are expensive. Same thing with paint. i buy a quart of clear with activator and it sets me back 50$. I buy a gallon of clear/activator (enough for roughly 50 frames), and im spending 65$. My point it isn't so much the cost of materials as it is a lot of other stuff, im sure the cans paint come in are damn near as costly for the manufacturers as is the product.

Throw out the mass produced notions of nominal value, realize what materials are going to cost, get a bit of perspective from this and help that in making something beautiful for the world by making a real bike.

everything you work on doesn't have to be a bike when you're done with it. Just practice the steps. Take it apart with a hacksaw

I figured there's no better way of practicing then actually doing it. I'm going to build a micro bike just to go through the motions and give it away as a trophy or something for an upcoming event.
something like this.

Hehe I've done a partial mini bike as well (pic here, pretty crappy eh?). I think I'll do a full one one of these days...

I should do that with some of the junk parts I have laying around. I built one back in the '70s that I wish I still had, I used tricycle wheels.

Well, I learned a bit today. Mostly MAPP gas is NOT hot enough to take off a brass brazed lug. I had the steel glowing red on the inside, but the tube would not budge at all. Stinks, I have a bunch of bent old frames.

it's not easy to pull apart a frame, even if you are using an O/A torch and the frame was built with silver. that's why I recommend the hacksaw method

whats the hacksaw method?

I cut the maintubes off so there are just small sections with the lugs in them.

Do I just ream out the lugs with a die grinder or something similar?

yes, die grinder, dynabrade, dremel with a drum sander

Now that does not sound like a party I want to attend... I would prefer the original advice to use tubing bits, and supplement that with self made lugs, it may be a some silly work, but one would learn a lot. Also, one can make lugs out of DOM, real lugs aren't chromo, or if they are, are not really serious examples of it, I mean castings or sheet metal normally. Neither is the kind of thing you would make a wing spar out of, OK actually sheet metal it good for spars if you have a BIG brake...

if you ever want to do a tube replacement repair, reusing the lugs isn't a total waste of time. For one thing, you'll learn not to under-price the repair.

I feel bad enough about one thing I posted above that I feel compelled to say that I was wrong. The BB's that Bringheli sells for $25 are not as nice as the ones that Nova sells for $35. Just got a Nova BB in and it's very nice.