A recent study by data analysts and behavioural scientists found the happiest jobs have two things in common, and neither is based on salary.
Instead, the secret to contentment in the workplace comes primarily from being given a degree of autonomy and from the satisfaction of seeing a job finished.
This means decorators and tilers are typically more cheerful than call centre staff, for example, because at the end of the day they can stand back and admire their neat wallpaper hanging or flawless grouting.
All of which ought to make the role of a bespoke framebuilder the most joyful of occupations. Unfortunately the work also comes with its own pressures, says Ben Yarnold, the man behind Teme Frameworks in Burford, Shropshire.
He points out that most of a bike builder’s time is not spent making frames and assembling components, but rather planning the build with the client.
‘More importantly, there’s the unspoken pressure of building a bike that the customer has dreamed of riding for many years,’ he says. ‘They’re placing their trust in me, and while they always love their bikes, until they have seen and ridden them I can’t enjoy that sense of relief or pride.’
Making wishes come true involves hours of thought, planning and design to create bikes without compromise. There’s no place for headset spacers to achieve the perfect bar height, or an unusually short stem to solve reach issues.
Cyclists who commission a bespoke frame have typically been riding for years and know the knots and niggles they want to overcome or avoid in a design, says Yarnold.
And then there are the individualised features that no mass-market bike brand is going to fit as standard. Bosses for frame bags and mounts for panniers and mudguards can all be specified in the build, as can rarer components.
‘I’m building a bike at the moment for a customer who plans to go bikepacking and wants super-reliable gears,’ says Yarnold. ‘They were thinking of a Rohloff hub but that would make the rear heavy, and you don’t want all your weight over the rear wheel, especially with panniers.
‘So I suggested a Pinion gearbox, which is heavier but integrated into the centre of the bike. And now it’s giving me a lot more to think about than a standard, round bottom bracket shell!’
Yarnold once rode a few cyclocross seasons in the West Midlands League – ‘and scored a few last places in the national cross series’ – but his interest these days is in long-distance races such as the Dales Divide, a 600km coast-to-coast event through the Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors, and the Highland 550, a brutal, self-supported 550-mile mountain bike route with over 16,000m of climbing through the Scottish Highlands.
His weapon of choice will be one of his own Teme Frameworks rigid mountain bikes, although next time he’ll allow himself the luxury of gears after the error of tackling this year’s Dales Divide on a single-speed.
You hum it, son, and he’ll play it
At Teme Frameworks, named after the nearby River Teme, Yarnold creates road, gravel and mountain bikes, with the choice of steel or stainless steel frames.
He cut his teeth at Islabikes, the children’s bike specialist, learning to TIG weld stainless steel for the company’s Imagine Project, which aimed to create bikes that would be rented, ridden, refurbished and then rented again.
It’s a noble concept, although Ben admits that he prefers to work in steel rather than stainless steel – ‘it’s easier to use and doesn’t blunt tools’ – adding that he tends to use Reynolds tubes for the front end of a frame and Columbus for the rear triangle.
He has ‘angles in mind’ for frame geometries, although these are then fine-tuned with each client on a frame-fitting jig in his workshop, with hours spent pre and post-fit discussing and finalising design details to achieve the customer’s vision. The whole process can take two to three months before the finished frame emerges.
As for the favourite bike he has built, Yarnold diplomatically selects the rigid mountain bike he made for his wife, Jen. At 5ft 2in and with a short inside leg, she had struggled to find a bike that fitted comfortably, yoyo-ing between a kids frame and an extra-small adults frame.
Tailoring the tubes to her created a mountain bike with an extremely short top tube and low standover height, yet still allowed for 27.5in wheels and 160mm cranks.
As an artist, Jen was responsible for designing the eye-catching hop plant badge that features on the head tube of all Teme Frameworks bicycles.
‘In the house I grew up in, which is next door to where I live now, was a hop-drying kiln. I wanted a logo that was simple yet recognisable, and the hop seemed appropriate,’ says Yarnold.
It’s a short, er, hop from hops to beer, and the chance to raise a glass to a master craftsman, who is keeping alive the skills of the steel framebuilder and bringing dreams to life.
Photography: Col Morley