Pro vs Home Jigs
For many frame builders the jig is their most essential bit of kit. It allows a frame builder to align a frame, ensure the wheels spin and check if everything is squared up. At Bamboo Bicycle Club, we’ve been building and designing custom bamboo specific jigs for the last 10 years. So for our first series finale live #workshopwednesdays session, we introduced our audience to our workshop and home build jigs! We took our audience through some of our best practices and how to use these jigs.
Workshop Wednesdays, Series 01, Episode 07
Frame Building - Workshop and Home Build Jigs with James Marr
🔴Recorded live on Wednesday, November 25th, 2020 at 5.30 pm (GMT) in London, U.K 🔴
▬ Contents of this video ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
0:00 - Intro
1:01 - Dark nights and a tough week calls for a beer in a bamboo mug! 🍻
1:45 - The professional bicycle building jig
5:16 - The home build bicycle jig
8:45 - Summary of workshop
9:00 - Questions from our live audience
9:11 - Locally manufactured and designed tubes
11:00 - Sign off
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Our live #workshopwednedays videos will help you to learn more about bamboo bicycles, tips and tricks on how to fit components, maintain your bike and how to be creative with bamboo. Hosted by James Marr, a bicycle designer and an engineer, James goes live every other Wednesday to help you learn about building a bamboo bicycle and takes your questions and announces promotions and deals of the week!
🪡 James' workshop apron was made by Georgina Habgood https://www.instagram.com/geeorrrge/ from denim deadstock. She is hoping to make the sewing pattern available for free soon.
✏️ Graphic design and titles by Hasan Waliany https://www.instagram.com/herby_werby/
If you’re building a bamboo bicycle frame, need help or would like to learn more about our Home Build kits, have a look at this link: https://bamboobicycleclub.org/products/lugged-kit-frame
Best way to learn about us is by visiting our Club News for detailed build reviews by our community of bamboo bicycle builders: https://bamboobicycleclub.org/blogs/club-news
"Founded in London in 2012 by James Marr, bamboo is said to have ideal properties for bike construction with its 'excellent vibration dampening effects', resistance to stress and durability."
One of the most common questions BBC builders ask is: do I need a professional workshop jig, or will the home jig that comes with my kit be sufficient? The answer depends on your goals — but for the vast majority of builds, the BBC home jig produces results that are indistinguishable from frames built on professional tooling.
The BBC home jig is a flat-pack single-use system designed specifically for the kit build process. It sets up quickly, accommodates a range of frame geometries, and holds tubes in alignment throughout the critical curing phase. For builders making a single frame, or even two or three frames over time, the home jig is the right choice: it is cost-effective, requires no permanent workshop space, and is designed around the BBC build sequence.
Professional workshop jigs — used in the BBC's London studio and available for volume builders — are steel-framed, adjustable systems that can be reset to different geometries quickly and withstand many build cycles. They offer greater precision for small geometry adjustments and are easier to use when building multiple frames back to back. For franchise holders and professional frame builders, a workshop jig is an investment that pays back over time.
"Bamboo Bicycle Club follows a niche-manufacturing business model that prioritises knowledge-sharing over profit-making retail, charging for workshops and kits rather than pre-made products."
The BBC's guidance: start with the home jig. If you build your first frame and want to continue building — whether for yourself, for sale, or as part of a BBC franchise — the upgrade path to a workshop jig is straightforward. The BBC team can advise on jig selection based on your specific build goals.