Getting started.

I ordered the first parts today from Ceeway, a plain mild steel Bottom Bracket and a steel head tube. Their web site is a treasure trove of frame building goodies. Its enough to make me want to make a steel frame too, but that will have to wait.
Now that these two parts are ordered it feels like a real start.
I am planning to make the frame from ply wood, but keep the rest of the bike as standard, ie, mostly metal. So for that I need to make the places where the wood meets metal work well. I will make special shaped rear dropouts from mild steel, so that therear stays can bolt onto them. They will be longer than normal to allow a generous spacing of the bolts so as not to stress the wood  at the join. The Bottom Bracket will be fixed to the frame with a fin of mld steel welded at 90degrees to the BB and bolted into the frame. I will try and use the same principal on the head tube. I came up with this soulution as I didnt want to have to machine complex shapes around the metal parts. I think it should work out well. Fingers crosed, as it is at the heart of the plan.
I should note that the famegeometry is based on my 1980's Ralliegh frame on my fixed gear bike. i love the way it feels andrather than take a punt on a new frame design for my first attempt, I thought I would stick with what I know.