His name is on fewer than 500 frames.

His teaching is on thousands more — from Michigan, to Shipley, to Ukraine.

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​Doug Fattic learned a lot about framebuilding at the side of Jack Briggs of Ellis Briggs. Four decades later he would teach the framebuilder keeping that venerable marque alive today. In between, he would braze several hundred frames as good as any assembled anywhere. His contribution to framebuilding is much more than the roughly 500 frames he had produced himself. Doug’s impact may be best measured by what he did with the framebuilding knowledge he acquired. 

 

Fattic never stopped seeking out builders who could inform his craft, from tracking down Jeffrey Bock at a RAGBRAI campground and sizing up his lug filing, to walking uninvited into Raleigh's SBDU workshop in England. And he would put everything he'd learned to use not only in Michigan, but also half a world away, building a workshop in Ukraine that has kept training framebuilders through the country's ongoing war.

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A Life As A Teacher

 

Doug Fattic is a teacher. If there is one thing you should know about him, that is it. Teaching has been his profession, but more than that, it is who he is as a person. Had he never picked up a torch and dedicated himself to teaching others how to build a bicycle, he would have found another craft to pass on. In a field where so many work to create something that will get noticed, Doug is one of the rare names everyone in framebuilding circles knows, though often not primarily for the bikes he's built, but for the shop he's run, his humanitarian work, and the decades spent passing the craft on to anyone ready to learn.

 

Born in Niles, Michigan, a rural town of roughly 12,000 residents, at the age of 15 Doug found himself in Rwanda, and then India. His physician father worked as the director of a hospital near the Rwanda-Congo border in Africa, later the site of terrible atrocities in the 1990s. During this time, Doug attended an English boarding school at the foot of the Himalayas in India. His final two years of high school found him at a boarding school back in Michigan.

 

Fattic would attend Andrews University, just north of Niles, graduating with a degree in behavioral science and a minor in history. When able, he took industrial arts electives, gaining important mechanical skills. Doug would also earn his high school teaching certification. From a family of Seventh-day Adventists both teaching and practical manual labor were a foundation of his spiritual life. At Andrews he would also earn a master's in counseling. For four years Doug worked as a high school counselor and social studies teacher at Spring Valley Academy in Centerville, Ohio, near Dayton.

 

Doug's plan was always to learn framebuilding in order to teach framebuilding. This would come to fruition when he moved to an expanded shop in Niles in 1983. There, dozens of aspiring framebuilders have learned from Doug, some returning several times before launching their own frame shops. He's still teaching, classes are typically two weeks and each attendee leaves with a custom frame. Some attend in hopes of becoming a framebuilder, for others it's a one-time experience to produce a bike for themselves. Doug is on hand to guide, and at times correct mistakes. One can also learn frame repair and painting at the Niles shop.

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Raising the Bar

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In 7th grade Doug asked his father to fix up his brother's English 3-speed racer, a step up from the single-speed coaster brake clunkers of the era. Two years later a classmate showed off his new 10-speed bike and Doug knew he had to have one. Then as a college freshman, a dormitory bike race and defeat at the hands of a classmate and his Schwinn Super Sport upped the ante once again. That Christmas, Doug would receive a Super Sport, which cost $96.50 at the time. It was the model just below a Paramount.

 

The bar would continue to be raised, a used Italian bike with Campagnolo components from a college classmate from California, then a Columbus tubed Campy Nuovo Record equipped bicycle for $112 in Rome on a 1968 trip, then a fancy Hetchins on a trip to England for $220. Each new bike was a considered step up, a learning process in and of itself.

 

There wasn't much more room to go after that, but his parents would visit the Vigorelli Velodrome shop of Faliero Masi in 1972. A Gran Criterium was now his, for $350. During a stop to see the Shroud of Turin, Doug's bike was stolen from his parent's rental car. His mother returned to the Vigorelli and convinced Faliero to quickly build a replacement. It arrived in Michigan six weeks later. Doug still owns the Masi and Hetchins.

 

Reaching the limit of what he could buy off the shelf, Doug took it the next step, deciding that he wanted to build a better bike than the Hetchins, which was undoubtedly beautiful, and a more beautiful bike than his Masi, which was undoubtedly a high quality race bike. He was going to have to build it himself.

 

From early on Doug sought connection through bicycles. In 1976 he approached fellow framebuilder Jeffrey Bock at a RAGBRAI campground. The ride across Iowa, started by Des Moines Register writers John Karras and Donald Kaul, attracted roughly 300 curious starters (reportedly 114 completed the ride) in 1973. By 1976 there were 4,000 cyclists crossing the state.

 

That Doug would seek out Jeff was a bit of a task. There they were, each astride a bike with his name on the downtube. According to Jeff, the first thing Doug did upon examining the Bock bicycle was to look at the underside of the fork crown and bottom bracket shell. Exasperated, Doug remarked, "Why did you do that? Now I have to do that!," as he eyed the extra filing and shaping Jeff had done, and in places where most wouldn't care to look. Jeff's reply: "Why aren't you already doing it?!" When Doug wasn't teaching, he was learning.

 

From the first trip to Europe, to finding Jeff at RAGBRAI and years later to joining up with framebuilder Rich Gängl of Golden, Colorado to attend the first UBI titanium framebuilding workshop, Fattic has always sought information, gone out of his way to connect with others who shared his passion, and to connect those individuals with one another.

 

The place to do this for many years was at the annual NAHBS (North American Handbuilt Bike Show). Fattic attended the first NAHBS in Houston in 2005 and was a natural collector of people, always in conversation with Bruce Gordon, or Brian Baylis, or Joe Bell. NAHBS ran annually until 2019. Since then, Doug has been a regular at the Philly Bike Expo, Classic Bicycles Auburn and other gatherings. He continues to be a linchpin in the custom steel frame builder community.

 

England and the Ellis Briggs Apprenticeship

 

While teaching in Centerville, Fattic spent his summers pursuing an apprenticeship abroad, visiting as many English bicycle builders as he was able. First visiting English frame builders in 1973, he met Johnny Berry in the summer of 1974. Berry had been the bicycle mechanic for England at the 1948 Olympic games and was a notable frame builder. With a spare afternoon one day he caught a train to the end of the line, which led him to the doorstep of Ellis Briggs, the frame building firm founded in 1936 by Thomas Briggs and Leonard Ellis in Shipley, Yorkshire.

 

Fattic wrote to both men requesting an apprenticeship for the following summer. In February 1975 he received two letters: one from Berry's widow, sharing that he had passed away; the other from Ellis Briggs, inviting him to join the company that summer. He would arrive on Memorial Day weekend.

 

Fattic went abroad out of necessity. The venerable American six-day racers, and those who built bikes for them, were decades in the past. Any continuation of past knowledge was hanging by a thread perhaps in New York, Detroit, or Chicago. Yet, to a person in southern Ohio, that knowledge might as well have been a continent away. And so Fattic, and perhaps a dozen other Americans, headed to England each on their own, inspired by American Cycling magazine (which became Bicycling) or some other publication that found its way to them.

 

Doug worked alongside Jack Briggs (b. 1914 - d. 1999), Thomas's son, who by then was supervising frame building and running the retail shop, and so had time to take on an apprentice. Doug was able to observe Andrew Puodziunas, the shop’s primary framebuilder. It proved an ideal arrangement. Rather than spending months on repetitive tasks, filing seat stays, mitering crates of tubes, Fattic was able to see the full breadth of the operation. He built two frames at Ellis Briggs: one for himself, one for his girlfriend, now wife. He has said that because of the quality of supervision, his first frames were quite well built. Ellis Briggs is still producing custom steel frames as of 2026.

 

While some builders were churning out two frames per builder per day, Ellis Briggs and Johnny Berry took roughly 40 hours to complete a frame. These were both close to what might be called the American mindset, in which the bike was an object to be obsessed over, carefully contemplated, customized, and methodically assembled with precision.

 

While learning at Ellis Briggs, Fattic had kept in touch with Mrs. Berry, purchasing much of Johnny's equipment, including a massively heavy frame alignment table that crossed the Atlantic by ship and made its way to Niles. That same table sits in his shop today.

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European Tours and the Search for Mastery

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After returning from England, Fattic prepared methodically for life as a frame builder and business owner. He enrolled in college courses in machining and accounting, built additional frames, and in the summers of 1977 and 1978 returned to Europe to visit builders in both England and Italy. He believed that perhaps old-world builders possessed some secret to the craft that had not yet revealed itself.

 

The trips proved clarifying. Visiting shop after shop, Fattic concluded that he was already doing things right, as valuable a lesson as any new technique. One encounter proved particularly enlightening. He had arranged an appointment with Gerald O'Donovan, manager of the Raleigh Special Bicycle Development Unit (SBDU). Operating from 1974 to 1987, the SBDU produced approximately 8,500 frames for special orders and Raleigh's professional racing teams, among the most celebrated steel racing bicycles ever made.

 

Beginning in late 1975, many SBDU frames were built with Reynolds 753, a new lightweight heat-treated tubing that required brazing at lower temperatures than was standard. Initially, builders could only purchase the tubing after being certified by Raleigh. Legend held that few passed the test, and many American framebuilders had failed. Fattic arrived late after misplacing his passport, and not finding O'Donovan he simply walked into the SBDU workshop. No one minded him looking around. Several builders were brazing 753 framesets.

 

It all looked familiar. In fact, lugs were being heated to a bright red, something supposedly forbidden with Reynolds 753. Frames were being muscled into alignment, another thing that wasn't supposed to be allowed. There was no secret. The mystique was broken. Eventually O'Donovan arrived, shouting at Doug that he wasn't allowed in the shop. He returned to Michigan ready to call himself a framebuilder. He would later become 753 certified by submitting a bottom bracket shell with silver-brazed tubes.

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Building a Career in Niles

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Fattic began building frames in 1976 in his grandmother's garage at 143 Silverbrook Avenue in Niles, Michigan. The address appears on his first decals, a nod to the British tradition of including this information on each frame. In 1983 Doug moved to his current shop at 914 South Third Street, a small cinder block building, a generous space for a one-man operation, but importantly large enough to accommodate several students at a time.

 

While Fattic's career has been anchored to teaching, his race bikes competed alongside the best in the world. In 1981, top American pro Wayne Stetina raced on a Fattic built frame. Stetina called it one of the best steel frames he ever raced. It's an incredible endorsement from a racer who would straddle a dozen of the most lauded marques over his career, earn 13 national championships, be a member of three Olympic teams, and spend decades as a road tech specialist and VP North America for Shimano.

 

Of course, Stetina's bike wasn't a simple frame order. Wayne stayed in Niles, observed the build process and even helped to hand file the lugs. He would race the Fattic bike in 1981, taking the GC in the Tour of Baja, and 2nd in GC behind his brother Dale in the Tour of Chiapas in southern Mexico, among other victories.

 

The market shifted, custom race frame orders dried up, professional riders were outfitted by team sponsors, and road bikes migrated toward aluminum and carbon fiber, Fattic's focus evolved. He would become the painter for Cherry bicycles of West Lafayette, Indiana and complete more repairs and repaints than custom builds.

 

He has had a few assistants over the years, but the name on the downtube has always read "Doug Fattic," and the majority of his frames have been touched only by him, from assembling tubes on the jig through painting and final assembly. The best estimate is that he has built more than 500 custom frames. Fattic did not use a standard or sequential serial number system.

 

By the early 1980s, he was teaching industrial arts part-time at Andrews University near Niles, where students could choose to build a bicycle frame as a semester project. At the same time he was taking custom orders for racing bikes through Pete DiSalvo's International Pro Bike Shop in Dayton, Ohio.

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The Framebuilding Classes

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In some circles Doug is better known for his bicycle building classes than he is for bicycles he built. Teaching aspiring builders was part of the plan from the beginning. As student demand dictated, and custom frame orders waned, teaching took precedence. Typically, four students at a time occupied Doug's shop for three weeks at a time.

 

The processes Doug follows in his course are meant to ensure that errors never accumulate. One student recorded the process as fluxing and tacking the seat tube into the bottom bracket shell on an alignment table, checking and re-adjusting alignment in small increments at each tack. This is repeated for the down tube and head tube.

 

Of course the frame geometry, bottom bracket drop, seat tube length, top tube angle, setback, stack and reach, are all worked out on a Fattic-designed fixture. The rear triangle is built by brazing one chainstay first, then setting the second chainstay's length and angle using a true wheel centered between the dropouts before brazing it, and seatstays are similarly length-checked. Doug is there to translate what is happening, flux temperature, alignment drive, joint saturation, and more.

 

Tim Massingill has had a view of Doug's work for decades, in both Niles and Ukraine. A physical therapist professionally, he's also a custom steel and carbon framebuilder and the lead for the Ukraine project's US Supply Chain. In 1988, after his bicycle was stolen at college, Tim's father connected him with Doug. They visited the shop in Niles and saw student frames occupying jigs.

 

He never did take a framebuilding class, but Tim would return to the shop regularly, helping out with various tasks, eventually completing some frame prep tasks. Over time he would pick up a torch and build a bike for himself, then when Doug went on a two-week vacation, he built bikes for his sister, mom, and dad. That show of productivity led to more work at the shop.

 

Even as he moved away, Tim remained in touch, or perhaps it was Doug who would keep them connected. As the Ukraine bicycle project began, he asked Tim to join the effort. From odd-jobs in the shop, to building bicycles, to traveling to Ukraine, Tim would witness Fattic's absolute obsession with detail and aesthetics, but also his civic engagement, and his teaching skills across cultures and environments.

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In 2008 Jeremy Schlachter of Gallus Cycles sought out Doug and signed up for his three-week course. Jeremy had already trained under Koichi Yamaguchi, once the master framebuilder for iconic 3Rensho, who became framebuilder for the US Olympic and National teams. Schlachter was looking for a new perspective to round out his learning. As he built bikes in his parents garage, he hit some stumbling blocks and had the feeling that he had gone as far as he could with just one course. Jeremy shared his issues with Doug, who was confident that he could help him round out his skill set.

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Jeremy spent the three weeks in class in Niles polishing his technique. Having some framebuilding experience allowed him to zero in on new skills and Fattic was able to adjust his methodical approach to teaching in order to address Jeremy's questions. The class went well enough that he stayed on for several more weeks, continuing to practice, and learning more about the painting process.

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The following year, Jeremy traveled to Ukraine for two and a half months, gaining valuable brazing time by completing more than 50 of the transportation bikes being produced there. He returned to found Gallus Cycles. He built part-time at first, then a couple years full-time, before settling back into part-time work after a move to Denver in 2013. For years afterward, he'd still reference the encyclopedic frame-building manual Fattic gives each student.

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Doug's classes haven't only served those planning a framebuilding career. He adapts to anyone who shows genuine interest and aptitude. Adam Hammond, an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto, was one such student. In 2008 he spent two weeks in Niles. Three years later one of his bicycles would be on display in a Canadian art gallery. 

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Growing up in London, Canada, a mid-size city known for being ordinary, unremarkable (perhaps the Ft. Wayne, or Omaha of Ontario), Adam found inspiration in local artist Greg Curnoe, the leading figure of “London Regionalism”. After discovering a $300 Marinoni on Ebay that he purchased primarily for its aesthetic beauty, Adam became obsessed with steel lugged bicycles.

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Adam immersed himself in the craft, becoming a regular at Toronto's Mariposa Bicycles, part museum, part bike shop, part frame building shop, with owner Mike Barry. He read through decades of Grant Petersen's Rivendell Reader. Eventually he reached out to Doug, whose assertion that American builders were the most fastidious gave Adam license to aim high.

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His third and last bike built would be an homage to Greg Curnoe. Adam sought to build the Mariposa bicycle depicted in Curnoe’s “Mariposa T.T.” The artwork is a life-sized bicycle shown in great vivid detail, screenprinted in electric yellow and green onto a sheet of plexiglass. Adam’s bike would not be a replica of the Mariposa bike depicted by Curnoe, but rather a replica of Curnoe’s depiction, the three-dimensional object produced in two-dimensions, returned to the real world.

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That bike would take a year to complete as he obsessed over every file stroke, after all, that’s what he was told American frame builders do best. He was creating art, an object of beauty, which is what drew him to the bicycle in the first place, and what resonated with his instruction in Niles. The result was stunning, a rideable work of art. The bike would go on display at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

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Fattic has also designed his own jig to aid teaching new frame builders. Its purpose is to provide, in effect, a moveable full-scale drawing. On a visit to F.W. Evans' shop in England, Doug saw a flat-metal jig design, as opposed to the heavy aluminum-extrusion fixtures other shops used, that directly influenced his own later jig.

 

Doug's design allows a cyclist's measured riding position to be transferred directly to the jig, and the actual seatpost and stem to be used on the finished bike can be incorporated as well. The jig also makes it easier for students to visualize the bicycle geometry as it takes shape, an advantage that reflects Fattic's constant orientation toward teaching. The jig itself is laser cut in Cherkassy, Ukraine by a man named Miroslav.

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The Ukraine Bicycle Project

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Among the most consequential chapters of Fattic's career has been his long involvement with a humanitarian bicycle project in Ukraine. Founded in 2000, the effort grew out of a plan by an Andrews University student to send donated bicycles to a sister institution near Tula, Russia. When Russian customs refused the container of donated bikes, it was rerouted to Ukraine, where a workshop was established on the campus of the Ukrainian Institute of Arts and Science (Ukrainian Humanitarian Institute) in Bucha.

 

In the project's early years, bicycles were purchased, repaired, and distributed, with Doug teaching basic mechanics, proper fit, and maintenance to keep their machines in daily service. The bikes were intended for clergy, but also educators, healthcare and social workers, and others. In much of Ukraine public transportation is limited and care ownership impractical.

 

The project presented immediate practical challenges. Donated bicycles came in a wide variety of sizes and component standards, making sourcing and repair complicated. Over time, the operation shifted toward manufacturing new bicycles using Fattic's own jig design, produced in Ukraine, which brought consistency and quality control to the work. The shop became a training ground for anyone seeking hands-on framebuilding experience, both Ukranians and students of Doug's from the US and elsewhere who sought more experience.

 

While a world away from Niles, in Bucha Doug created an active teaching shop. There he would teach bicycle building and brazing to Ukranians of diverse backgrounds. One example that stands out for those who saw Doug's work, was the mentoring of a former military officer who served at Chernobyl in the aftermath of that nuclear disaster. Doug's education and experience in teaching and counseling were tested by the former officer's might-is-right philosophy.

 

While the transportation bikes produced in Bucha are utilitarian, they are also thoughtfully designed. The frame aesthetic that leaned heavily toward being a work of art had to be tempered. Doug realized early on that something close to a classic Dutch bike design would serve the Ukrainians well. A seven-speed internal rear hub, a dyno front hub, drum brakes, adjustable stems, and chain guards each help to create a low maintenance bicycle for everyday use.

 

For the first fifteen years of the project, cycling tourism trips through Ukraine helped to raise funds. Park Tool donated enough tools to outfit the shop. Shimano, WTB, SUNringlé and others have provided components. Several small grants and donations kept the effort going. Fattic has also partnered with Bikes4Ukraine, a Copenhagen based philanthropy.

 

The humanitarian dimensions of the project deepened dramatically following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and again in 2022. The Bucha workshop, located in a city that would become a focal point of the war's early atrocities in 2022, has continued to operate in various capacities. In addition to bicycle production, the project expanded to include the manufacture of wood-burning heaters, a direct response to the practical survival needs created by the conflict.

 

The bicycle shop itself was broken into by the Russian military. While many general purpose tools and personal items were stolen, the speciality jigs and framebuilding equipment were left untouched. Since then, the effort has continued in fits and starts when practicable.

 

Yuriy Kuzmenko, a former engineer and church administrator, is Doug's counterpart in Ukraine, and manages the daily operation of the shop. Following the Russian invasion Yuriy was able to secure some materials from the shop and then hid in a root cellar before escaping to the west. In time, he returned to the shop and manages its operation today.

 

The war in Ukraine continues and so does Doug's work with the bike project. The work has persisted in fits and starts whenever conditions allowed. It is hoped that Doug, Tim, and perhaps others, will be able to visit the shop soon. While the future is uncertain, for more than a quarter of a century Doug has rallied international partners and encouraged aspiring framebuilders and unlikely students, the driving force, his vision that a bicycle could be both a practical transportation solution and a vehicle for human dignity.

 

Full Circle at Ellis Briggs

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Ellis Briggs famously said ‘no’ to an American aspiring framebuilder named Richard Sachs. Of course the company had welcomed Doug Fattic. According to Paul Gibson, the current framebuilder and sole proprietor of Ellis Briggs, this decision was rather straightforward. At the time, Sachs was a teenager looking for a start somewhere. Fattic had visited the shop more than once, he had bought a couple Ellis Briggs frames. He had met Jack Briggs. It was a small frame shop and an overseas visitor, who had returned, and who had purchased frames was meaningful. There was a relationship already established.

 

Paul started working at Ellis Briggs in 2000, the year after Jack Briggs passed away. Paul started on the sales floor, eventually finding his way to the mechanic stand. He always wanted to learn framebuilding, but in the early 2000s steel bikes weren’t selling and no one seemed excited to teach framebuilding. Paul would pressure Andrew Puodziunas, the framebuilder at the shop, the same builder Doug had observed during his time there, into showing him how frames went together, how to do repairs, a bit of this and that. Years went by, Andrew was diagnosed with cancer and passed away in a very short time period. The two of them had talked about how they would continue the Ellis Briggs name and build frames together. That was 2013.

 

Jack Briggs had hoped a family member would take over the business. He was a framebuilder himself and employed other framebuilders, but Ellis Briggs was really a retail shop, that was the profit center. Over the course of 80 years, the shop produced some 6,500 frames, though did far more repair work than new builds. In the UK it was standard to replace damaged tubes and repair frames over and over again.

 

Paul had never wanted to be on his own, but was forced to decide whether or not to move forward building bikes. Now without a mentor, Paul reached out to Doug. He knew that he needed some amount of proper frame building instruction. Paul would spend three weeks in Niles alongside other students. He would learn silver brazing for the first time, Ellis Briggs had used brass, and produce his first frame from scratch. The American who spent a summer as Jack Brigg’s apprentice was now teaching the future Ellis Briggs framebuilder.

 

In addition to building Ellis Briggs frames, Paul now teaches framebuilding in Shipley. He’s taught approximately 50 students, one-on-one, either as a collaborative one week course or a few days longer for aspiring builders. And he teaches with the same methodology as Fattic, in large part because Doug learned his style from Jack Briggs.

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Legacy

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From the beginning, Doug's plan was never simply to become a builder, it was to learn framebuilding always with an eye toward teaching it. That decision shaped everything that followed. Rather than guarding technique the way some do in a niche craft, he built a shop designed around apprenticeship.

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That same instinct carried him past the walls of his own shop. The Ukraine bicycle project is teaching at a different scale entirely. Doug didn't just supply bicycles to Ukraine. He trained the people who would keep building bikes, through a program that has now outlasted a break-in by occupying soldiers and years of war. 

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Doug has transferred his knowledge to students with varied skill and objectives. He has given back to the shop that welcomed him in, ensuring that the oldest custom framebuilding shop in England continues producing steel frames in the traditional fashion. His legacy of teaching will likely continue to overshadow his personal frame building, a high-bar considering the personal mastery he achieved.

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​Photos of Fattic bike by 3bbb /// additional photos courtesy of Doug Fattic and Adam Hammond