. You've got to get your frames made at a frame factory, because bike frames must be incredibly precise. It always makes me chuckle when I see somebody come into the bike biz from some "higher" industry, thinking that because he's been making car parts or tank turrets or airplanes or speedboats it's just got to be simpler making bikes. What these people don't realize is that the tolerances one must hold in this business are at least as close as as in just about any other industry. Consider this: I (when I was in the biz) would reject cranksets if the total runout exceeded one tenth of one millimeter at the large chainring. That means the bottom bracket, and the squarehole cut into the crank, must be absolutely perfect, and the crankarm absolutely straight. It means the metal must be sufficiently hard at that joint so as not to deflect under the heavily leveraged load applied at the pedal. Very, very hard to do.

Likewise, frames are hard to make, if you want them to be straight. It's very hard to make a frame in which the rear wheel is centered inside the chainstays, and centered underneath the rear brake hole, and where the front and rear triangle are true to each other, and where the head tube is parallel to the seat tube. It's so hard to do that, that I've seen manufacturing companies that make very precision car parts just throw up their hands after years of trying to make frames and say, "It can't be done."