does anyone know what the measurements for a hunter cycles frame that would fit a 36" wheelset… thanks for the help
Lessee… you want to copy a hunter frame, but you don’t want even to buy one to make the measurements yourself? And the people who support Rick for his many years of service to the unicycle community infest this forum… 
I don’t have the money… and I have a guy willing to quote construction of a titanium unicycle frame, I just need drawings and measurements… I’m sorry…
step one: buy coker wheel
step two: figure out your own dimensions
it’s not difficult
It’ is when you are lazy and Broke…
If I were you I’d wait until I had a whole lot of money before beginning a project like this. It’d probably be best to start off with cheap components, then if you really need to upgrade do it.
Here’s an idea for a Coker frame: The Krashin Kenny Kustom Koker
Easier to make than the Hunter style design. You can probably find a suitable magnesium fork crown, add on the titanium tubing and you’ve got yourself a Custom Coker frame. Easy measurements for the tubing and minimal forming and welding.
It’s not an ideal frame design because the crown will be a little wider than necessary. If you’re short, or if you have stocky legs, your thighs may rub on the crown. So it all depends.
Easier to make, and it doesn’t rip off IP from someone who actually designs and builds these things for a living, and who has been investing in the unicycling community for longer than anyone else currently building stuff for us.
If the guy is custom building something, there’s two problems you’ll come up against.
Firstly, it’ll cost you more than hunter unicycles, because they’ve already got the jigs and stuff setup to make unicycle frames and they don’t need clever titanium welding gear etc. I know when Joe Rowing made Blizzard unicycle frames, which are similar in style to the Hunter ones, he wasn’t making masses of profit from the £200/$400 per frame price, given the time it took to make them up. If he’d got those made at normal workshop prices it’d have been twice as much.
Secondly, you can’t just copy a design made in one material and make it in another. It might just not work, and then you’d have wasted hundreds of dollars on a piece of junk. When you buy a professional frame, you’re also paying in part for the ten prototypes that got junked because they didn’t quite work, whereas if you get custom work done, you end up paying in full for any screwups.
The stock coker frame only costs $30. The raw materials for a coker frame probably cost about that much. Get one of those. Or if you’ve got a bit more money, wait for the new hunter style coker frames from unicycle.com.
If you’re too poor to buy a hunter frame, then you don’t have enough money to get people quoting you for custom frames. Even people on here who’ve had simple Nimbus 2 style frames custom made for them seem to have spent more than the cost of the hunter frames.
Joe
I don’t know that Duct Tape is being unreasonable… It’s not really like Hunter would be losing anything, is it? I mean, he’s not going to sell Duct Tape a frame anyway by the sound of it (because he can’t afford one). And it’s not like Duct Tape is going to go into mass production and sell loads…
Presumably Rick himself studied other frames before designing his own? And there’s one or two other makes which are using Rick’s design. The main benefit of a Hunter frame is surely the craftsmanship and maybe the possibility for customisation. Unlike “pure” intellectual property (such as software, music), physical goods made by a craftsman are involved here so the situation is not the same as other forms of “copying”.
I’m not necessarily saying that copying is right here, but it’s not like Duct Tape is actually proposing anything that would seem to harm Rick in any way. I vaguely remember somebody claiming Rick actually helped him out in making his own Hunter-style frame, but I don’t know the details.
For the record, I’m all for Rick being able to continue to make an effective business out of making high quality frames. I’m just speculating that imitation in this case is more flattery than threat.
I’m all with you Mark!
While everyone’s accusing each other of copying…
Which came first, the Hunter or the Rowing/Blizzard?
Very similar designs.
Rob
The Hunter by far.
telford
The Telford may have come before the Hunter. I’m not sure who came up with the idea of using two smaller tubes for the frame rather than one larger tube. I’ve seen Penny-Farthings with that style of frame (two smaller tubes forming a triangle instead of one large tube). Unicycles may not have been first to come up with that general idea.
The Telford:
The Telford resembles the Hunter frame only insofar as they both use paired fork tubes. Other than that there’s really no resemblance.
The Telford and the Hunter were designed pretty much independently. Bruce Bundy worked with Rick Hunter and Geoff Telford Faraghan did the Telford himself. The first prototypes were ready the same month (Dec 1997) although one was a few days before the other and I forgot which was which. I remember riding both before they were powder coated and thinking “How cool is this?” Who knew then what was coming over the next few years. Actually the best thing for me was the 24x3 tires rather than the frames. Also the improvements in seats, first the Gemcrest carbon bases and later the Wallis seats and handles - I think that was a bigger deal than the frames too. And of course going with Profile instead of those crappy hubs we broke all the time.
Good luck to Ducttape - you’ll need it doing a custom unicycle on a budget. Let us know how it comes out.
—Nathan
thanks for the wish of luck I’ve got a while before I can start of the whole unicycle I am budgeting for it to cost around a total of 1,200, but I’ll start when I have about 1,500 in my bank acount so I have some wiggle room, I am only a third of the way there. I have been working on some sketches for my frame but I don’t have any workable ideas yet, I will post sketches when I get one that I think will work I would love feedback…
Nathan’s post makes me think I ended up being harsh, and I’m sorry for that. However, given that you’re seriously considering spending this much money, it’s not unreasonable to play a little “hardball” with you so that you don’t just pour it down the drain.
If you wanted to build your own complete 36" uni using all good-quality but basic, easily-found available parts (examples: hub, spokes, rim, clamp, etc) including a commercially available, proven steel frame (say, Hunter), you might be able to do a pretty good job for $1500 if you have a machine shop buddy or skills plus shop access. This is for good-quality stuff (no “placeholder” parts) and assumes that your skills are pretty good. Of course, your costs will vary with choice of parts, brakes or not, etc.
Why not do this instead of the Ti thing? If you dropped the $1500 on a Ti frame alone you might not even get a frame that is usable. In the process of doing a complete uni with steel frame, you’ll learn a heck of a lot about the nitty, gritty, ugly details of trying to do something which seems so simple on the outside. You also have a much better chance of ending up with something you can actually Ride with Pride and say “I did it!”. You’ll also have a more solid base for Titanium Excitement.
Do some searches here in the forum and you’ll find Andrew Carter’s, Rod Wylie’s, and other people’s experiences with this kind of thing.
In one sense, one can think of a unicycle frame as a structure which ties together the more important elements of wheel, pedals, saddle. You really ought to know a lot more about those things before you can design a frame from scratch, let alone get a Ti one right the very first time. If you don’t have a wheel or saddle that you are confident deserve to be integrated with a custom Ti frame, then you’re not likely to develop a frame that will somehow match something that somehow comes along in the future.
Basically, your skills, tools, insight, budget, and unicycle components should be of roughly the same caliber. As the caliber of each of these improves, your ability to produce a complete unicycle will improve. If you are lacking in any of these areas, then your project will suffer and be brought down to the level of the lowest caliber item.
Best to you in your endeavors.
Two years ago I made a costum 36" frame. The design was inspired by the penny farthings the people who helped me make. There is a page about it in German. The pictures tell it all.
http://www.wuk.at/hochrad/berichte/einrad_hans.php
A construction drawing of the frame is here (DXF)
http://www.wuk.at/hochrad/berichte/bilder/einrad.dxf
The measures in the drawing are accurate, they worked well. I used the frame for about one and a half years. The frame was first class. I made the hub myself too. It was not good enough. In the end I converted the uni to a 36" Schlumpf.
Hans