The Métier method
There are many paths into framebuilding, but Jamie White’s might just be the most interesting, and has undoubtedly helped him produce some of the most incredible results
Most framebuilders weren’t born that way. Ask around and you’ll hear tales of jacking in careers in advertising, former lives spent welding sheet metal, art colleges, silversmithing, professional catering… the list goes on. Yet there are few if any who can list neuroscientist on their curriculum vitae.
‘I used to work in the neuroscience research field concerned with neural and molecular reasons for sex-specific behaviours,’ says Métier Vélo founder Jamie White. ‘We’d do experiments like genetically reprogramming brain cells in a male to be female, and the other way round, and look to see whether the transgendered animals had male or female behaviours. The interesting point was that behaviour emerges because the brain processes information in a sexspecific way, not that males and females have anatomically different brains. They sense the same environment but think about it differently.’
A lab coat and a microscope couldn’t be further from oil-stained overalls and a welding mask. Nor could custom race bikes be more different to genetically reprogrammed transgender lab rats. But for White, the transition from neuroscientist to framebuilder isn’t quite the gargantuan leap it might seem.
‘In many ways framebuilding is an extension of the things I did in the lab, in that setting up a protocol for building frames is like designing an experiment and implementing it. It takes a detailoriented approach, which is me. Only here I’m making something tangible as opposed to generating something abstract like knowledge.’
Naturally White loves and understands bikes – he has been a two-wheeled disciple since 1982 – but beyond that one gets the feeling that this is a man for whom framebuilding comes naturally. And like the brain cells of opposite sexes, he too senses an environment but thinks about it differently to other framebuilders. After all, most – and particularly those new to the trade – build in steel. Not White. He chose carbon... and 3D printing.
Total control
‘When I started the company in 2013 I looked around to see what techniques were out there and what other people were doing,’ says White. ‘There are excellent welders and brazers out there already, so I knew I didn’t want to do that. I did know I wanted to do full custom, and I’d been riding carbon since it came out, so tube-to-tube carbon frames seemed the obvious choice. But I soon realised it’s a lot of work.’
White’s first thought was to simplify the process by creating a lugged frame out of carbon. But that would require moulds, and for true custom geometry moulds need to be unique to each frame
to create very specific angles, which would be prohibitively expensive if ‘traditional’ machined moulds were used. Then came the brainwave.
‘I realised I could 3D-print the lug moulds, but it turned out it was far more direct – and more cost-effective – to print the lugs themselves in titanium. So I design them and have them made by one of three prototyping companies, in the US, Israel and France. It depends on their capacity at any given time.’
‘Cost-effective’ is a comparative term of course. White estimates that each lug set eclipses the cost of the tubes from anywhere between 5:1 to 10:1, and his frames come in at the more flamboyant end of the price spectrum. But the cost is worth it in more ways than one.
‘This bike here is mine, and I crashed it badly and snapped a couple of tubes. So I dissected it and replaced the broken tubes. The thing with the lugs is that they are virtually indestructible – they will last a lifetime. Worst case I could de-bond and re-bond your bike with a new carbon tubeset.’
That carbon comes from one of two sources: Rockwest Composites in Utah, which once rented facilities to wheelmaker Reynolds, and Tim Crossman Composites, a well-regarded operation in Ukraine. Those tubes are also somewhat different to the norm. While many tube makers use rollwrapped tubes – formed by rolling carbon sheets – White deals exclusively with filament wound tubes.
‘Filament winding is perfect for me, as like the lugs it’s very precise in that you have computer-controlled placement of the strands [a CNC machine winds them around a mandrel in a specified pattern], so there’s no variability. I could be at the level of specifying the strand placement to Tim, and he would implement it for me, but what I usually do is tell him the characteristics I want and what the rider is like and let him work it out. He builds frames too so he knows what he’s doing.’
This level of control seems to imbue every aspect of both Jamie White and his Métier Vélo creations, and is perhaps best summed up in one brilliantly simple – and simply brilliant – final touch.
White explains he dislikes seatposts – ‘they slip, creak and often seize’ – so he has come up with an integrated system. Instead of the seatpost topper sleeving over the seat mast and being secured by a collar, the topper threads into an insert in the seat mast and is locked in place by a lock-ring. To adjust saddle height you unscrew the lock-ring by hand and turn the saddle in the frame, before tightening down the lock-ring.
‘It’s exactly one millimetre higher or lower per turn,’ says White. ‘No tools, it will never slip, you’ll never snap a retaining bolt, and you’ll never see this on another bike.’
‘I realised I could 3D-print the lug moulds, but it turned out it was far more direct – and more cost-effective – to print the lugs themselves’