The Paterek Manual for Bicycle Framebuilders (Shop Version)

Great book!!! Read it before you start building your frame. So much information about tools and techniques that you will use it over and over.

Stolen form Mr. Paterek. Not real book

great

You can buy the latest edition elsewhere for $75.00. You can also download an earlier edition in PDF for free.

This review is for the original 1985 ring-bound version of this book. I have not seen the 2004 Edition: The Paterek Manual for Bicycle Framebuilders (Shop Version) , but it is available at Tim Paterek's personal website for under 100 bucks. The 1985 manual is framebuilder's manual of standard options to assist in building a steel bicycle frame using an oxyacetylene torch and painted with a forced-air spray-gun. It does not describe TIG or how to join anything other than steel any other way. Assembling a frame is like assembling a puzzle using pieces produced from different manufacturers. The manual contains exact tube measurements for all the different models of Ishawata, Tange, Reynolds, Columbus and True Temper tubing. Instead of discussing how different design options can be used to design different rides in a frame, this is a textbook that will assist in the practical problems encountered when trying to get tubes to fit into bottom bracket shells, dropouts and lugs. Methods of assembly are laid out in lists that carefully describe both the procedures and the order of operations in assembling a bicycle frame out of parts. These lists are the genius of this book because they tell you the real order of all the different steps for how to assemble a frame out of a collection of pieces. Different methods are discussed such as pinning the tubes (a method preferred by Francesco Cuevas). The pages are laid out on a typewriter with the author's own drawings as illustrations. The entire production appears to have been reproduced on a photocopy machine. The photographs are particularly poor. The entire book is what you would expect of a framebuilder writing a book instead of an professional author. I used to paint bicycles professionally and the section on painting is the weak. Painting a frame is done is an exact order to avoid over-spray. It is strange that he doesn't give you any lists of which tubes to paint in which order so the paint flows together in a single sheet while it is wet before it dries. He hilariously warns you not to smoke while painting. He goes into considerable detail describing how to set-up a paint-room and discusses paints of the period such as enamel and epoxy paint. He does not describe how to powdercoat. Even for using enamel this section is dated and very weak. While this doesn't have any information to help a mechanic do a repair it does contain a lot of information written for a mechanic who wants to make a bicycle frame out of tubes. The secret to doing anything is knowing the order of what to do. This book not only gives you the order but tells you how to correct and adjust the different sub-assemnblies as you are putting them together. If you are going to build a bike frame you need this book.