Metal Guru Class FAQs

No prior experience is necessary.

The tuition and raw materials payments for frame building classes include all practice materials, a student handbook and a basic set of raw materials. The tuition and raw materials payments for paint classes include a student handbook, organic vapor respirator, paint and related supplies. For seminars and workshops, the fee includes any practice materials and also lunch.

You must make a deposit to reserve class space. Please note that deposits, workshop and seminar tuition payments are non-refundable and non-transferable. Payment in full is due TWO weeks prior to class start date.

Courses in the Frame Building, Frame Painting and Continuing Education programs are limited to two students per class. Workshops and Seminars have a limit of ten people.

Class hours are Monday-Saturday 8am-5pm, with a 1 hour lunch and any other breaks as needed. Seminar and workshop hours are from 9am-3pm with a 1 hour lunch. If you cannot participate on a Saturday, please inform the administration in advance and we will do our best to accommodate your schedule.

Tuition does not cover any expenses related to lodging, travel or meals, with the exception that lunch is provided for seminars and workshops. Espresso coffee is available to students gratis.

Metal Guru is not a trade school, therefore the curriculum put forth by Metal Guru is entirely avocational and solely for the purpose of personal enrichment. Metal Guru does not provide any placement with employers nor make any promises that taking classes at Metal Guru are part of a path to employment in the bicycle industry.

Personal protective equipment is provided for the students. If they prefer to bring their own that is also fine. Students should bring any prescription eye wear that they may require.

Metal Guru has a dress code, which will be strictly enforced to ensure each student’s personal safety. Open toed shoes are not permitted inside the building at any time. If you are operating a machine, long hair must be tied back, all jewelry and watches must be removed, and long sleeves must be rolled up to the elbow. A dark colored long sleeve shirt is required while welding to protect the student from ultraviolet radiation produced by the welding arc. In the interest of the student’s personal comfort, shorts are permitted, but anyone wearing shorts should exercise extra caution to protect themselves while operating machinery, welding, brazing, or using hazardous chemicals. Students should bring any prescription eye wear that they may require.

Except for regularly scheduled holidays, Metal Guru will be open for business during normal business hours. Metal Guru recognizes that circumstances beyond its control, such as inclement weather, power outages, national crisis, or other emergency, do occur. If an unforeseen situation arises you will be called and/or emailed to indicate an emergency closing. On such occasions, Metal Guru may close for all or part of the regularly scheduled hours of operation.

Metal Guru Classes are conducted within the Vicious Cycles World Headquarters and students will use the company's production equipment to perform the tasks dictated by the curriculum. Practice time outside of class hours is only feasible if there are no facility conflicts with ongoing production jobs and is purely at the discretion of the administration.

Many alumni students have returned to Metal Guru to take Continuing Education classes. These would give the student the same access to the facility and attention of faculty, but without the lesson portion.

We don’t expect you to have a photographic memory; therefore we encourage note taking, photos and short videos. We do request that you only post to the internet with approval of the administration. Additionally if we feel the information would be helpful to future students, we may request a copy.

Our professional frame boxes and packaging materials are available to students for $30. Additionally, students may use our discounted shipping rates and will be billed at the actual shipping costs.

Unfortunately we are too small a company to offer discounts to industry members.

We feel grateful to our veterans for their service. Unfortunately, because we are purely avocational and not a formal trade school the Veteran’s Administration will not allow any funds from the GI Bill to be used to cover the cost of taking a course at Metal Guru.

Students need to build a conventional double diamond style frame. Students can choose road, cyclo-cross, gravel or mountain with either standard or plus sized tires.

A basic 4130 chrome-moly tube set and small parts kit is provided as a raw materials portion of the class tuition payment along with the necessary small parts. Material upgrades are available for an additional fee.

We have a hands-on attitude at Metal Guru and encourage students to do as much hands-on work as possible. If a student is uncomfortable with a certain operation the instructor can of course help. Occasionally an instructor may need to assist to keep the class on schedule.

No. Bicycle frame building is a complex and time consuming endeavor, hand filing each joint would mean missing out on valuable class time needed to cover other aspects critical to the frame building process.

We hold community technical schools in high esteem, so we don’t feel you would learn anything that is incorrect in a class given at one. But we can also assume that the technical school instructors don’t know how to build bicycle frames and would not be able to give specific advice, so if your time is limited it is not necessary.

Due to the thickness of fork blades and steer tubes, forks require higher heats to produce, which beginning students unfamiliar with the subtleties of heat control will not be able to achieve. Therefore we do not offer fork construction as part of the curriculum.

Upon completing the class the frame is now yours. You are welcome to continue your education with a paint class or use the paint services we offer. We can also send it to a paint shop of your choice.

Students may purchase a component kit for their frames at a discounted price to be quoted at the time of order. Please speak to the administration for further details.

In class students will use the same high quality paint raw materials currently used in our paint shop from PPG and House of Kolor brands.

Yes of course this can be scheduled; you must contact the administration in advance to make arrangements

One of our main goals in teaching is that the student gains a basic understanding of the process and extremely elaborate paint schemes become a distraction that would inhibit learning of the basics.

We have a PPG paint mixing bank on premises, so we can mix small quantities of any color. We also have a good selection of House of Kolor brand paint.

We are a production shop with ongoing work for both our in-house clients and also other OEMs and small builders, this unfortunately creates a facility conflict with the class scheduling.

Just let us know in advance and we can provide a practice frame to paint.

Although powder coat painting appears to be a simple skill to acquire it is actually quite a technical process. Additionally results are very much equipment dependent, so techniques would vary between particular equipment brands or models.

Our instructors are experts in their respective fields and these seminars and workshops are meant to be informative while not having the same intensity of our longer courses. They are meant to be an introduction to a particular aspect of bicycle manufacturing.

Sorry, but the lunch period is meant to be an informal social opportunity with the instructor and fellow students, and although you are not required to eat or take part, the cost needs to be evenly divided among all attendees.

We have repeated seminars when the demand is there, so please send us your request.