Don,
Interesting idea; but 3 hours is not enough time to even think about building a frame without specific machinery and tooling like the factories in Europe have/or had back before factory lugged steel frames began to disappear. There is actually about 1 to 2 man hours in the typical 80's era Eddy Merckx frame, not including paint. You might get a set of mitered tubes, a drawing, and maybe some stays slotted in 3 hours. in such a contest. In a normal setting around here the tubes would get selected and washed, and a drawing made in that amount of time.
Brian Baylis
La Mesa, CA
I think it would be fun to give each framebuilder the same set of tubes and lugs and tools and to have a "race" to build a frameset in 3 hours - fixed time limit - or something ridiculously short (including paint job !) Afterwards, cirque attendees could vote on the best frameset!
The goal is not to torture the framebuilders, or injure them, however much it might seem like torture for some of the perfectionists on this list. Rather, the goal would be to allow people to see a frame being built (if that's not a trade secret) and to see what sorts of resourcefulness could be applied to building a frameset in a rather short timespan.
- Don Gillies
San Diego, CA