After ten years of teaching framebuilding, designing and selling frame jigs and generally being a force for good for British framebuilding, the West Country’s Bicycle Academy has closed its doors.
In its goodbye announcement, below, founder Andrew Denham and the other workers there, cited a perfect storm of Covid, Brexit, supply chain issues and rising power (and gas) costs behind the difficult decision to call it a day.
Full announcement is here.
The Bicycle Academy was one of the main drivers behind the recent explosion of beautiful, handbuilt frames coming out of the UK, seen at shows like Bespoked as many of today’s lauded builders got their start on a ‘Beginning framebuilding’ course, or turned to the Bicycle Academy for advice on tools, jigs and technique. Andrew even helped newbies like me (Chipps) braze a Grinduro keyring at the original Scottish launch of the event.
The best way to see how they’ll be missed is going to be for us to run the Hack Bike Challenge video. Now this is why you build bikes in your shed!
So long Bicycle Academy, we’ll miss you.