Paul ‘Burf’ Burford is best known for his BTR range of mountain bikes and trail tools, as well as his Gasser downhill bike. On his stand at Bespoked Manchester, he had all those things on display (including the Forum’s own Tom ‘How Much!’ Howard’s new Gasser No. 4). But centre of the display was a ‘Rat Bike’. What was this, I wondered? Paul took a moment to tell me all about it.
What is Rat Bikes?
Paul: Rat Bikes is a brand alongside BTR Fabrications where I’m trying to make frames at a price point. So affordable frames basically. The brand is called Rat Bikes. So called so that they can be a little bit ratty. And this one’s called the Dad Rat.
So it’s basically a bike for me. A dad bike essentially. Something that I can do everything on. A bit of gravel, a bit of cross country. It’s got all the rack mounts, so I can do some bike packing, take the kids to school, do the shopping. All that kind of stuff.
I’ve watched you on your Instagram making this fork, sort of in the final hours before the show! You made some decisions in that process. Is the fork still in development or is that how are you planning on doing it?
The fork is not necessarily part of the production series. It’s just I needed a fork for the show! I’m going to be running rigid so I kind of built the fork for that. Loads of people have said that they love the look of it and they’d like one. So I just need to refine the manufacturing process. I had a lot of trouble with making the bends at the top of the fork. It basically just didn’t work. The tooling that I had available to me at the time just wasn’t good enough. So I just need to make some better tooling and then hopefully I’ll have some better luck.
It does look nice like that though. I like it.
It is a cool looking fork isn’t it.
So the frame, when you get it into production, how long would you expect to take over making a frame like that?
In order for the whole brand to work, I need to be able to make 10 frames in 50 hours. So 5 hours a frame. In order to meet that price point, I basically just have to be able to build the frames extremely fast. Basically all of the price in a handmade frame is in the labour time. The materials are negligible. Like the materials in a Gasser is like 300 quid, and then I’m selling it for £6,500.
And that’s probably still not minimum wage!
No, definitely not. I’ll make most of the bits on that frame and it takes forever. With the Rat Bikes, we’ll be doing batches of 10. The frames have been designed to eliminate as much faff as possible. So when I say faff, I mean like fixture set up, chatting to customers, you know, options like choosing colour or bottle bosses. Just eliminating as much of that as possible.
So there are going to be no options. It’s black only. The bottle bosses and the seat clamps that you see on the website, those will be what you get. You can’t choose anything. That just reduces the amount of time that I have to spend talking to customers, arranging with the powder coaters, what colour to paint stuff, all that kind of thing. It’s just one option.
The rear triangle has been designed to reduce as much time spent on that as possible. So we’ve got a yoke at the front by the bottom bracket. That’s just folded sheet metal, so that’s cheap and easy to cut and manufacture.
And are you making that yourself?
So I did make that myself for this bike. But I won’t be in the future. I’ll need to like have that batch made, laser cut and all that. Get them to do all the folding as well.
The dropouts again are laser cut sheet metal, even the non-drive side with the brake mount, it’s all folded sheet metal. And same with the drive side dropout.
The chainstays are just straight cuts, both ends. So I’ve got a little fixture that I can put that tube in and just use a hacksaw to cut both ends. There’s a saw guide, so that reduces like any skill in setting up the fixture, any skill in using machines to cut the tube. It’s just like a hacksaw with a saw guide. Literally anyone can do it.
Same with the seat stays. There’s a straight cut at the back. There’s a fixture that they all go in. And then you’d put both the seat stays in, weld the gusset in and then notch the top end. Again, that just reduces loads of fixture setup time. And then the rear triangle is exactly the same across all three frame sizes. This is a large and the top tube is meeting above the seat stays. For a small, the top tube will be below the seat stays. But again, all the cuts, all the fixtures, everything for the rear end stays exactly the same. This is all reducing the amount of hours that I have to spend on the frame build, which then will allow me to sell it at a decent price point.
Well go on. What is that price point?
It’s going to be £650, frame only. Frame and fork could potentially be an option in the future, but right now I haven’t got the production sorted out.
For all that functionality that it’s been designed around, the finished result is like super elegant. It’s really nice.
Yeah, I was a little bit worried that it would look tacky and cheap with this folded sheet metal, but I’m actually really happy.The end result does look really good.
Indeed it does. Too good for the school run!
I’ve got a bit of a ropey gravel bike that I use for the shopping run and stuff. And then I built this and I was like, “Oh, I’m not actually going to be able to leave this outside the shops!”.
And will you be able to resist the temptation to add things like shopping baskets and other accoutrements?
So like I say, this one has got rack mounts and stuff already in the rear end and it’s got mudguard mounts in the gussets and whatnot. And we’ve got bottle cage mounts. This is going to be my own bike. So yeah, I will be putting a rack on the back. I’ll probably have a rack on the front as well. I could potentially make those things and have them as other products that you could buy on the website.
This is just the first model. There’s going to be like a Ranger type one. Hopefully I’ll be able to come up with a decent design for a suspension bike as well. Maybe there could be a bike packing specific one. Now that we’ve got the dropout and yoke concepts, I know that it of works. We can then move that across loads of different models.
But you’re starting with the life bike, the one bike for almost everything.
Yeah. That’s the bike that I wanted. I’ve got a gravel sort of cyclocross bike and it’s great for riding on the road. But anytime I like want to hop a curb or take it into the woods, I feel really sketchy on it. I just wanted something that was a bit more playful from like my style of riding.
Well, thank you very much. Good luck. I hope you get lots of batches of 10 orders!
To place your order, head to the BTR Website.
Replies (18)
Comments Closed
Oooo I bet Tom Howard won’t be happy that you’ve spilled the beans on what his new bike is.
Nah, I’m good, told loads of folk at the show 😉
Does the bike industry conspire together to create a new definition of affordable?
In mean, i quite like it, i certainly don’t disapprove, i appreciate and am actually quite impressed it costs that little for a uk handbuilt frame.
But 650quid for frame only… That is not an affordable bike. I am lucky enough to know i could just go out and buy it without a second thought.
I just think its a weird description.
£650 a frame is comparable to far east welded frames, churned out in the hundreds/thousands. I’m struggling to think of UK made frame that’s less than a grand? £650 is a bargain.
But people who want an ‘affordable’ frame don’t GAS where its made. It’s a bargain for a UK made frame but it’s not a bargain.
Sonders new falco frame is £399
Or on one scandal is £199 and you can get a rock shox fork for another £99 to go with it.
The bike industries use of the word affordable is as out of touch as most politicians!
Like the bike, love the thinking and how it’s been rethought to make UK production an option.
But the headline is doing it a disservice.
It’s a lower cost UK handmade frame for bikepacking, touring and traditional riding. If you look at it like that it looks like good value and a great product. The kind of thing I’d like when hurtling down stuff starts to lose its appeal.
It is not what I would consider a rat bike. That’s the kind of battered old Muddy Fox hybrid and Dawes Galaxy that my kids ride to school. £650 should get you three of those!
“Affordable" I could forgive on the basis of the price of UK manufactured alternatives.
‘Churned out’ to the same level of quality as these, using exactly the same level of welding skill that went into these. The cost differential is because of higher labour costs in the UK, not higher quality.
If you want one if these because it’s made in the UK and are happy to pay more for it because of that then fair enough, but don’t kid yourself that what your buying is better than a mass-produced one.
I said all that. I just think describing it as an affordable frame is weird.
Its a cheap BTR. But its an expensive frame for how its intended to be used.
Which is all fine. I quite like it other than boring colour.
Again, my 11-year-old Taiwan-made steel frame was £499, which wasn’t a massive outlier then unless you were comparing with Inbreds.
It’s good that someone is doing this, and it does look like a lot of thought has gone into how to minimise labour (which as he said is the expensive part) to make it as cheap as possible.
Something that always struck me about how BTR did things was that they appear to be totally no-compromise about all their frame construction details (have a look at how they deal with chainring clearance on the chainstay!) with apparently no thought for the resulting labour time. And that makes it very very hard to earn a living building frames because they either cost a fortune or you earn way below minimum wage – and in the case of their current models I’d say they are v expensive (but probably still great value across their lifespan if you buy the right frame for you) and Burf is still struggling to earn a fair wage.
I hope these new frames are successful and they can take these learnings to a wider range of frames that keep the BTR geometry and travel ethos but pay better and cost less.
Yeah, I’m of a similar opinion, it’s not an “affordable" frame, but it is a “cost optimized" British built frame.
I just don’t know if the pitch is right. Middle-class Fat Dads (ahem) will drop £650 on that and before you blink the built cost £2k+ and be the sort of “Rat bike" that can’t be left unattended while you’re in the pub or perusing Lidl’s wares…
I dunno. Some people will be able to build it up from the parts bin and the black on black colour scheme from an obscure brand makes it relatively stealthy. But as you say, it’ll be easy enough to end up north of £2k.
Affordable might mean something different once China invades Taiwan.
Headline got me excited
I’ll stick to commuting on my Carrera then.
I have a sort of similar parts bin rigid 29er, but that uses an old Commencal Frame that was £50 off eBay, similar cost for the forks. All in I doubt the whole thing cost me more than about £400 to lash together, The Geometry isn’t going to be as up to the minute, but it doesn’t need to be, Serves as a “Dad bike" and “light trail trundler" That’s more like my idea of a “Rat bike" TBH and I think a lot of other people have a similar interpretation. What Burf has built there is a “Nice HT frame" (IMO), I appreciate the ‘model T’ approach, thinking about optimized tooling and jigging in the design to hit manufacturing costs and minimising labour requirements, but a UK made frame thats £600+ to the punter is still a ‘good’ bike and most people mulling that sort of spend on a bare frame aren’t going to be putting cheap kit on it.
To be clear I think there is an appetite for a frame like this, I think Burf should lean hard on the “UK made" of it and his experience/involvement with bikes generally over the last Decade or so. The apparent flexibility of the design, I can see it serving duty as a utility bike, or a bike packing setup, or a general trail HT. Lot’s of people want a bike like that and will pay the premium for a “Made in the UK" Sticker…
Aye, fair comment. I think though that a lot of what he’s doing seems quite ‘scalable’ and presumably if he wanted to do it, the cost could come down as volumes go up. The use of stamped/folded dropouts etc. is clever, as is the use of guides for cutting.
“Made in the UK" probably will attract a subset of people.
Like the idea, especially if they do some slightly more hardcore versions like a LT hardtail. That said, the details like the dropouts etc look crap IMHO (I appreciate why they’re done like that) so would I rather pay for a handbuilt UK made frame with some finishing done to keep costs as low as possible or pay the same amount for a far more finished product from the Far East?
I like it. Reminds me of the Surly 1×1, a bike with similar utility. The price seems fair in comparison. Like the 1×1, this is the sort of bike you buy and never sell, or if you do you regret it.
I also like the fork. It reminds me of the old Humber forks from way back. They gave a nicer ride on rough roads than the standard style forks, and I presume this may do the same.
Shame it’s not singlespeedable. 🙂