Story with Bowman?

I remember seeing one video he did where he said the frame inside and out was a work of art. It’s the only video he ever seemed to be happy. I checked the frame online and the cheapest I could find was €8.5k. For the FRAME. ON SALE!!!!

I don't know anything about welding, but the video has quite a few comments saying that it's rubbish. Any welders on here who can comment?

The closest I've ever some to welding something it to watch someone else do it on youtube. He does show welding on a specialized frame by way of comparison and the difference is significant, even to someone that hasn't a clue what they're looking at.

Speaking of welding there was a very good programme on the bbc tv last week about a company making folding bikes.

Think it was this one.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07pmyd6

As a young lad I worked in Medite in the late 90's during a maintenance shut down, where there was two rival mechanical contractors working side by side.

My foreman was walking past the work of his rival and threw his eye over the welding and said "it'll be fine I suppose, nothing a coat of lumpy paint wouldn't fix"

Jeez. I'm glad I got my refund before it all went t1ts up.

He is entirely correct about the cycling media & YouTubers - it is so rare these days to see a negative review (and almost impossible with the British brand / British media combination). On a very rare occasion they might take off one star due to the price but that is all

From Neil Webb's LinkedIn page it appears that he went from brand manager and technical writer to bike designer. How does someone with apparently no significant technical or engineering background start designing frames?

One thing I can't understand is how the bikes were so damn nice to ride. I still miss riding mine. You'd have thought a hastily bodged together misaligned series of tubes would ride like a dog.

What does he think of mainstream alooominum bikes from the major manufacturers? I've never heard any reviewers gushing about Giant Contends and the likes.

There's the CAAD range of course but is Hambini similarly defacatory on them? :)

I think he has undoubtedly shat all over Cannondale's (at least at one point in time) notoriously bad QC on BB30 shells. Wouldn't keep track of all his stuff, got tired of watching them after a while, but don't recall him ever taking an alu bike apart like that.

TBH, its not that difficult in many cases. Pick an Asian firm already bulk fabricating frames in the material of your choice. If you want to "indiviualise" the design, pick angles based on the more-highly rated similar frames already on the market. Choose features based on what t'internet regards as the must-haves for that type of bike - headset bearing size, through axles, tyre clearance, BB standard, mudguard eyes etc. Then leave it to the engineers at the subcontractor to sort out the design and fabrication details. No different to personally speccing a one-off titanium frame from one of the Chinese suppliers.

There's more than Bowman taking this approach, and not just for frames either.

(One British firm did take a little more "hands-on" approach with the design where I suspect that they may have overruled the reservations of the fabricator engineers. The end result was their occasional "special offers" of cheap sample frames where it transpired they'd made some giant balls-up of a design detail)

Flow straightener (I think) from one of the display engines at the Ferrari museum..

So basically he picked a bunch of options from a menu? 'Design' makes it sound like he sat down with a CAD program and y'know, designed it. From scratch like.