DBR: UIowa Exhibition

Students' bikes. Great turnout yesterday for the Handmade Bicycles of University of Iowa Design, Build, Ride exhibition reception.

Building a steel or titanium bicycle frame requires a combination of technical tool/equipment skills, artistic vision, and meticulous craftsmanship.

Precision welding is a crucial skill, and almost all of the students in the first course have never welded. Learning TIG welding requires lots of practice. Parents are blown away that their son or daughter can do this kind of work.

Real design and engineering require using your hands, it requires craftmanship. To translate a two-dimensional drawing into a bicycle frame you have to have knowledge of geometry and design principles. That is, for instance, if you want to not simply figure out all of the clearances and alignment of tubes needed to fit a crank and chainring into the cluster of tubes at the bottom bracket, but build a bicycle frame that incorporates them, you have to make them, as it were. You have to bend and cut and make the integrated performance concepts. Whoa…make the concepts real? Yes.

When I think of the list of all the abilities I would want my grandson to have, on the list, right alongside being kind, is craftsmanship. I teach craftsmanship. In an art school. And boy is it fun to see what students make.