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Greetings
from California! We've been blessed with some interesting cycling events
here in San Jose lately. Tour of California wrapped up just not long ago
and now we've another fine event coming to town. It's the North America
Hand Made Bicycle Show (http://www.handmadebicycleshow.com/).
Most
riders would be happy with buying an off-the-shelf production bike. Most
of the standard production bikes work great, nothing wrong with that.
However, there is a sub-culture that exists in the cycling world: custom
frame building. It also called Hand Made Bike, i.e. bike frame that's
made to measure to individual rider.
North
American Hand Made Bike Show is a collection of most, if not all, of the
North America custom frame builders/suppliers all into one place. Showing
off their labour of love. This sub-culture has its following with some
of the legendary custom frame builders elevated into cult figures.
The
show was not too far from my place, held at the San Jose Convention Center.
I ended up paying $15 for the entrance fee.
Not
too far from the entrance, is the legendary Richard Sachs. Quite naturally,
Richard was surrounded by his admirers. I slip in the booth, pretending
to be a groupie. And I got to have a extremely short conversation:
"So,
Richard, what's your lead time, nowadays?"
RS: "About 4 years lead time!" (It was 1.5 years lead time last I spoke
to him maybe 3 years ago).
With shock and
disbelief, I replied "OK, I'll be back in 4 years time and buy something
from you…"
End
of conversation.
Anyway,
here are the few shots of Richard Sachs' creations:
Next,
to the Columbus booth:
Columbus
is a frame tube-set supplier. I try to inquire about the possibility of
building a complete carbon fiber frameset in the garage, by an aspiring
frame builder. It turns out that the process of rolling your own frameset
is relatively straight forward, according to Columbus, anyone can do it,
with their carbon tubeset (for about US$1,200). Provided you have
some kind of fixture like a frame jig to hold the tubeset together in
correct angle and alignment, and you can make a frame jig out of a plywood
board (that's a different topic). Looks like an interesting weekend garage
project. Hey, you got start somewhere…. All the big guys started small,
they didn't get big in one day.
Here
are a few shots of the Columbus' carbon tubeset and the finished frame:
Here
come now my favorite legendary local carbon frame builder: Calfee.
Craig
Calfee has been making custom carbon frameset since 1989. He even supplied
a batch for Greg LeMond to land him the '89 Tour victory. Check out his
bamboo bike. Yes, it's real bamboo, imported from Japan and the resulting
bike is actually rideable and weighs not much more than the carbon one.
Pay attention to the lug, it's actually hand wrap with carbon tape which
is very labour intensive:
Here's
how Calfee fabricated a custom carbon frameset with custom head tube angle,
hand wrap the headtube with tape:
Thanks
for reading and Part II will be coming soon!
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