Hi Richard Those (lugged), frames are the "easiest frames to build"! Other frame construction methods, including TIG, will not leave enough time during the duration of the course, to build a fork. I guess if you are doing one of those "easy" frames, there is so much time left over you get to do the fork. What am I missing here?
I think it really has to do about the process. In theory TIG welding is faster. No lugs to worry about, no cleanup necessary etc. The glitch is that TIG is way harder for a beginner to get the hang of than brazing. Most of the TIG class is spent welding and the rest fabricating. In the lugged class very little time is actually spend brazing.
Even after spending all this time TIG'ing most people at best are only fair at it. For me it took a lot of time to get any good as in hundreds of hours. Now I do it without really thinking and it goes quickly but there was a few times I wanted to give up.
Another misnomer is that TIG welding is faster than brazing. That is not really true. It seems to take me just as long to weld a bike as it does to braze one. Its just that when I am done welding I am done. With a lugged bike I am looking at another whole day of filling, sanding etc to get the lugs were I want them.
I still have that first bike. It is a 56 cm. That would have been O.K if it wasn't meant to be a 58. I kept botching my miters and it got progressively shorter and shorter. Then one of the instructors mis set my fixture and gave me about 90mm of BB drop. They called them the Richard sachs stays. When I wasn't looking they did some gentle manipulation of torch and such an put them back. I keep it to remind me.
Dave Bohm
Bohemian