Sep 5, 2023
This week’s episode is part 2 of our interviews from the MadeBike Show in August 2023. We speak with Moots, Fat Chance, HotSalad, Seeker, Neuhaus, Pinebury, Circa, Story Street, Paul’sComponents, Stinner, Horse, Frameworks and Bosch.
Episode Sponsor: Hammerhead Karoo 2 (promocode:THEGRAVELRIDE)
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[00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome tothe gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravelcycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, eventorganizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport
I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discoveredgravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don'tneed to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlockall the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist.
This week on the podcast, I've got round two of my interviewsfrom the made bike show in Portland, Oregon. In this week'sepisode, we've got John from moots. It's talking about that seven50 B wheel size got Chris from fat chance. Be vivid from hot salad.Chris McGovern from seeker and McGovern cycles. Nick new house, thepine Berry team, circa story street. Paul's components, Aaron fromStenner. A horse. Frameworks Bosch. We've got it all. Anotherexciting episode. Can I tell you how jazz that was to attend thisshow and get all these great interviews
And I guarantee I'll have some of them on, for longer forminterviews so we can get an even deeper dive as to their backstoryand what they're all about as a brand. And frame builder. Before wejump in, I do need to thank this week. Sponsor hammerhead. And thehammerhead crew to computer. As many of you wind down your adventseasons, you may be looking forward to a winter filled withexploration and adventure rides. And there's no better device thanthe hammerhead crew too, for those adventures. It's the mostadvanced GPS cycling computer available today with industry leadingmapping navigation and routing capabilities that set it apart fromother GPS had units.
You can seamlessly import. Roots from Strava commute and moreyou can route and reroute on the fly and create pin droppingrouting with all with turn by turn directions. With upcomingelevation changes. You know, this device is always up to date withthe latest software as they do biweekly software updates, makingsure that they're adding the latest features, whether you boughtthe device two years ago or tomorrow, you're ready to go with ahammerhead kuru too. For a limited time, our listeners can get afree heart rate monitor with the purchase of the crew to visithammerhead. Dot IO right now and use the code, the gravel ride. Atcheckouts today, it's an exclusive limited time offer for ourpodcast listeners. So don't forget that promo code. Just add theheart rate, monitor to your cart, along with the crew too, and usethe code, the gravel ride today. With that said let's jump right into all these conversations from the made bike show in portlandoregon
[00:02:48] Jon | Moots: Can I get your name andbrand? John Caribou from moots based outta Steamboat Springs,Colorado. Good to see you again, John. You too. One of the like,moots doesn't need a lot to draw attention to itself. The titaniumframes have always been gorgeous. We've had you on the pod. I'vetoured the factory.
I know the type of work you do, but one of the bikes you havetoday is making a lot of noise here at the Maid show for a veryspecific reason. Can you talk about that? Yeah. It's Yeah very muchin prototype stage right now. But the seven 50 D wheel size seemsto be catching a lot of people interest and, comments out there onthe social medias.
But yeah, it's, I think it just lends itself to the lineage andthe heritage of Moots over time. Just always being on thatforefront of innovation and trying different things. It doesn'tmean that. This is a defacto new standard by any stretch. It'sdefinitely a new option and honestly that, that wheel size been,has been ridden for some over the last four to five years.
We just haven't seen it. Gotcha. And you W t B was the partnerwho came to you with the rim and the tire, presumably, to explorethis. People who've been around mountain bikes for a while willremember that. 26 to 29 moments. Can you talk about what's therationale behind a bigger wheel size?
Yeah. It's, to me being around the industry long enough, I doremember the introduction of the 29, and it was the same companythat, W t V that came to us with a rim and a tire at, in 98 andsaid, what do you think about this? Let's, do you want to buildmaybe a test bike? And we all know, the.
History of the 29 inch proliferation in the bike world, and notthat this is gonna happen there, but always nice to be nimbleenough to set up and build a frame around a given wheel size. AndMoots is in that position to be able to do that. Yeah I rememberthat moment and getting on the first 29 ERs and thinking it took alittle bit more to get the wheel going, but when you rolled overstuff and when you had those bikes going, It was remarkable for meand I was a very early convert to that bigger wheel size.
So it's just a curious kind of intellectual process I'm goingthrough and understanding like, what would a gravel bike feel likeas someone who rides very technical terrain, I could see theadvantages of rolling over stuff more easily. And you mentioned thecontact patch extending on a bigger wheel and what that might meanto the rider.
Yeah, I think it's, if you think about. Riding gravel. There'snot a lot of extremely technical situations where you're makinghard turns. It's a lot of straight line speed. It's a lot ofstraight line hits to the outer edge of the tire and rimcombination at that point. So making it longer and, quite a bitbigger, spreads that out and lessens, washboard, it lessens babyheads and whatever you might encounter.
In a similar passion that the 29 did for the mountain bikeworld. Yeah, I think it's just been really interesting as gravelyou could argue that it started out as being road bikes plus as westarted to allow bigger tires in there and explore differentterrain. But it's super interesting as we get into this moment manyyears into the gravel evolution, to start just exploring thingsdifferently and thinking about, yeah, it doesn't need to feel likea road bike as you're going faster and these bikes are getting morecapable.
Who knows, maybe a bigger tire size and bigger start, a biggerring rim size will have advantages that riders will start to see asthey start to spend time on this new size. Yeah it'll beinteresting and, we're anxious to put more time on it. Honestly ourtime has been limited, but we're getting there and, throughout thisfall, late summer, we'll be logging miles and jotting down ourthoughts and getting feedback to W T B and.
Anybody that would be interested in listening. Yeah. Amazing.Thanks John. I can't wait for that additional feedback. Yeah,Craig, thanks for having us.
[00:06:54] Chris | Fat Chance: Okay. Can I getyour name and the brand? Yeah. The name is Chris Chance and thebrand is Fat Chance Bikes. We're now building all our bikes inMedford, Oregon. Got a nicely set up shop there and we've justintroduced the Thai crisscross, been doing it in steel for a numberof years and I'm really excited to be doing it in titanium and thepeople that have been buying them are really excited to ridethem.
Were you working with titanium with the mountain bikes manyyears ago to begin with? Yes. Yeah, we started in 93, building atitanium yoti. Okay. Called it a fat chance back then. But yeah, sowe built a bunch of titanium bikes and getting back into, you know,relaunching the brand. A couple of years ago we were mostly doingsteel, but you know, Ty really called me back.
What do you like about Ty for for a gravel bike purpose? Well,in general I love Thai because, you know, it never rusts. It's gota nice kind of springy resilience to it. I I like to do theengineering where we're, I have much experience in steel indesigning bikes and tube diameters and wall thicknesses to get the,the, the ride properties I want, the the resilience, the, thestiffness where I want it, and the, just the lively feel in thebike.
And so I I translate the stiffness of a steel tube into titaniumusing a computer, and that way you get all the benefits oftitanium. It's lightness, it's kind of springy feel, but I'mdesigning the bike more for the stiffness of the ride. So it givesyou the performance you want as you're riding, like, especiallylike off road, you know, if you're going down a, say a trail atlike as much as 30 miles an hour, your bike is, you know, bouncingaround or whatever, and you're just focused on where the frontwheel is going.
But if you're bouncing around a bunch, your body is takinginformation from what the rear wheel is doing through your feet andyou, without really being conscious of it, you're doing thecorrections of that through the pedals, cranks and, and frame tothe wheel to keep the rubber side down. And so how the bike feelsis just really important to me that I want to have the rider andthe bike work as one.
Right. And so having that, that ability to Sense what the bikeis doing at some, like, not even a conscious level, but developingthe trust that the bike is there for you, you know, you can do whatyou wanna do and the bike is, is supporting you and having thatpeak experience. What is the customer journey to get a, a fatchance at this point?
Is it, is it a custom process? Are you building stock frames? Webuilt stock frames, but we do some custom sizing and you can youcan email us at yo at Fat Chance Bike. And get the conversationstarted. There's also a phone number on our website, fatchance.bike. It's do bike instead of.com and we can talk on thephone, we can do email and just get everything nailed and build youan awesome bike.
I know some of the, you know, challenges in working withtitanium tubes are around tire clearance and things like that.Yeah. What, what kind of tire clearance can you achieve? Yeah, sowe can do pretty much any tire clearance, if you notice on thisspike. We have what we call a demi yolk. Yep. And that affords usthe same rigidity, excuse me that a full tube would, would offer,but gives us the, the clearance for wide tires.
Like this bike will take up to like a, a 44 millimeter 700 C ora 2.1 up to two inches or 2.1 inches. And if you need to write adouble, we can account for that. Typically our stock bikes are justone buys up front. Got it. But we have a lot of room because we'reusing this demi oak design. And what kind of turnaround time do youlook at to get a bike?
Yeah. Right now we're in the roughly eight to 12 weeks,depending on the model. Okay. Yeah. Pretty quick. Yeah. That'sgreat. Thanks Chris. All right.
[00:10:36] B Vivid | Hot Salad Bicycles: Can Iget your name and brand? Yes. It's B Vivid from Hot Salad BicyclesB. Where are you building out of? We're here in Portland. Okay.Yeah. And how did you get into Frame Building? Oh, long story. Giveus a short version. We can have you back for the long form one.Okay. I used to sit at Destroy Bike Co in the Bay Area and SeanEagleton was building bikes there and I was like, this is a thing,I can build bikes.
That is absolutely what I'm doing. 15 years later, here I amdebuting hot salad bicycles. And I've been chasing welding all overthe country. Amazing. So you've built up your expertise and nowyou're ready to go out with hot salad. Yes, exactly. So you're acustom builder. So talk about the customer journey.
Like how do you like to get to know the customer so that you canbuild the bike that's right for them? What kind of materials do youuse? Yeah, so I build in steel and titanium. And I like to talk tothe customer. We have quite a few emails back and forth. I wouldjust wanna know where you're riding.
Like what are you riding on? What do you like to ride fast? Isthat a thing? Do what is your current favorite bike that you liketo ride? And then what don't you like about that bike? Yeah. Thoseare the basics. If we're having that conversation, just say, forexample I've been on like a random carbon bike, some specializedbike, and I like the way it feels.
Sometimes I, even me, I have a hard time articulating like, whatis it that I like or what have I, what I don't like? How do you ekeout those qualities that then translate to you as an artisan givingme what I really am expressing? Absolutely. I do some research,right? I go look at that specialized bike and I see what specializeis saying about it.
But I also know the inherent differences between carbon,titanium, steel, right? Titanium is gonna be a little flexer. So ifwe're trying to make a carbon feel, which is what Rook asked for onher bike you're gonna have to go up a tube size right. And that'sgonna make it a little bit stiffer, give you that snappier ridequality of a carbon bike when Ty is so much flexer.
Gotcha. So there's just small things like that where over theyears I collected those tidbits from other builders and otherpeople who are willing to gimme time. Amazing. Yeah. And what typeof bikes do you like to build? All types. I'm down for the weirdideas. I built that titanium clunker behind you as well that Ishowed at Philly Bike Expo.
And then this is a beautiful all road that wanted to be a littlebit more aggressive because Rook is an excellent rider. And I makecommuter bikes. I just making, so it doesn't really matter whattype of bike it is. And from a customer interaction, how long doesit take to get a bike? Once they've, once you've locked down thedesign elements of it, you've done your research.
How long does it take to produce a bike and get it back out tothe customer? Yeah, probably about a month. And I know that's along time, but I'm currently doing all of my own finish work aswell. So unless you want me to send it to Black Magic or somethinglike that. And then it could be probably as little as twoweeks.
And how do you think about finish work? Are you doing your ownpainting or are you doing anodizing? What kind of options do youmake available for customers? Depends on the material, obviously.Yeah. But I have a powder coder who is excellent and he can dofades, he can do sharp lines. And then I also have, I do.
I did the t anodizing on this as well. And then, yeah, those arethe two options that I currently offer, but I'm hoping to add wetpaint in the nearest future. Okay. Okay. And what's the best wayfor people to find out more about the brand and your story? Yeah,hot salad bicycles.com. Okay. And are you on Instagram and any, thesocials?
I'm hot salad underscore bicycles on Instagram. Got it. Thanksfor the time. B Yeah, thank you.
[00:14:06] Chris | Seeker & McGovern: Can I getyour name and brand? Chris McGovern. And now what brand are yougonna say? That's my question. We're here with Seeker right now. Wedo have a McGovern bike in the house, but we're launching Seekerbike company today. Yeah. That's awesome. So McGovern bikes, customcarbon bikes.
Yep. Great looking stuff. You've been building for a while. Yep.But we got these seekers in front of us. So tell me about thebrand. The intention and what we're doing here. Yeah. Basicallywith these metal bikes, the steel and titanium gravel bikes, I'mjust trying to get, basically make it more available, get people onbikes, on building more readily available, easier to do.
Obviously the materials are superior. Materials for ridinggravel, the carbon customer is a different customer, basically,yeah. Where are you building these bikes? These are be, these arebeing built in the, in Portland. Oregon. Okay. At the momentthey're going to be built in Olympia, Washington eventually.
But yeah, US made, yeah. And what's the customer journey looklike? Or do you have stock sizes? Is this a custom jam? Yeah, sowe're gonna do stock with custom options, basically. Okay. So thegeo will be stock 50 to 60 centimeters and two centimeterincrements. But we can customize anything.
So I want you to go to the website, be like, yep, I'm a 54. Iwant that stock color. I want that build kit. Boom. And we're gonnatry to have that two week turnaround. And when I think about my,like tire size desires and things like that, do you haveflexibility there or have you built around a particular tirevision?
So the gravel this version of bike is designed around a 45 C 700by 45 and up to a 46 tooth single ring. So it could be two by orone by. Gotcha. But I want you to be able to do unbound and throwthe big meat on if you're rolling, if you're Keegan Swenson orwhatever, you wanna roll that big single Yeah.
With the the mullet build or the Explorer build, whatever. Yeah.We want to have that clearance for that. So we've designed aroundthat. Yeah. And you mentioned you're offering a steel bike and atie bike. What do we see different visually between the two bikesand what sort of adaptations do you make going to tie from thesteel?
So on. What we see here basically is the same geometry, samestyle. We have a different seat stay cluster on this one. I dothink that the tie bike will end up being the mono stay, like thesteel. Okay. We're just need, we're working on repeatability ofthat. Tie's a little bit trickier to bend but we're gonna do that,I'm pretty sure.
The same weeding of the tubes, the down tube is swedged for alittle bit to the T 47 bottom bracket. So it's a little stiffer,laterally, 44 mil head tubes. The geometry will be very similar.The, if you've ridden tie, the ride quality is a little bitdifferent. Yeah.
Titanium's kind of like air quotes, the forever material. Sothat's why the tie offering is there. It's a different customeragain. Nice. Yeah. Let's talk quickly, Chris, about the origin ofthe Seeker brand. 'cause I do remember this project at the veryearliest start of Covid. Yeah. Lockdowns. Yeah I've, okay.
I've been riding bikes for a million years and your brain goesin weird places when you're riding your bike all the time byyourself. And I've had this saddlebag designed in my head forever,and usually just meant I'd come home from a training ride and getthe scissors out and chop on the bag I was currently using.
And during Covid, for whatever reason, I just decided I got onAmazon, ordered a sewing machine, bought some fabric, and startedmaking saddlebag. I love it. And it turned out to be really good.Some people wanted it, so I made some for some friends and then Iwas like, oh, I'm gonna get some labels. And I actually waslabeling them as McGovern cycles thinking, Hey, when someone buys abike, I'm going to throw a saddle bag in their box.
Yeah. And then bike shops wanted 'em and I was like, ah, it'sgotta be something else. So we came up with the seeker logo. Iworked on the artwork with Matt Loomis, who's done a bunch of workwith Paul Components. We came up with this cool logo. And thepeople like it. Like we've been selling a lot of t-shirts and stuffand so I felt oh, this branding is strong.
Let's do some bikes. Yeah. I think it's super evocative seeker.Yeah. Exploration. Yeah. Makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Are you I'veseen you explore a lot of different bag. Options for your running.Yeah. For various things. Yeah. Are you now just settled on theseat pack as being the one product from Secret?
Oh, no. So it's our only like stock product for the bags rightnow. I do some top two bags. I do some I call it the rapid responsebag, like for racing scenarios, it's like quick to it. I do framebags. Those are a little bit more custom. They require atemplate.
Yeah. I build, I built hydration vests. I built. Fast packs. Ibuilt backpacks. I'll sew anything really. But I think the secretstuff, we're gonna keep it towards the bike oriented stuff.Possibly. The new website is Secret Adventure Gear, so it's stillopen-ended. Yeah. You're ready to go?
Yeah. We're ready to go. We're ready for whatever you need.We're ready. I was just gonna ask, what's the best place for peopleto find out more information about the bikes and the bags? I thinkright now as the Instagram handle, yeah. Okay. Is a secret Atsecret, a dv. The website is secret venture gear.com.
Sweet. Yeah. Thanks for sharing this, Chris. Yeah, thankyou.
[00:19:07] Nick | Neuhaus: Can I get your nameand brand? I'm Nick Newhouse with Newhouse Metalworks. Nick, whereare you building out of? We're building out of Novato, California,so Northern Bay Area. Nice. Right up the road from myself in MillValley. That's it. I started to hear about your brand through aneighbor in Mill Valley who had one of your hard tail mountainbikes and then later learned you've been doing some gravelbikes.
Can you just talk a little bit about the brand and the type ofgravel bikes you're putting out there in the world? Yeah, so wejust released this weekend actually our steel anti Tanium drop bar,bike lines. The steel line is the Solana. It'll be available in aroad, an all road and a gravel version.
And to pick the part, those three different categories, what dothey translate to? Yeah, so the road version will have a 32 C max.It'll fit a double chain ring larger sizes for those longer roadrides. The all road model kind of blends a little bit of gravel, alittle bit of road, right. It's got a, a little bit of that roadgeometry.
It'll fit up to a 40 C tire. Still can fit a double chain ringand then the gravel model will go up to a 48 C tire. And it'll bewon by specific for those rougher roads, dirt roads, gravel roadswherever you wanna take it. Gotcha. And I interrupted you, I thinkyou were gonna move on to the titanium model over here.
Yeah. So the Eon is our titanium version of that. It'll beoffered in the exact same configurations. So you'll have your road,you'll have your all road, and you'll have your gravel. We willalso offer the eon in an advanced model, which will be very much a,a custom frame set and a departure from our stock sizing.
And it'll come with three D printed dropouts that are unique toyour specific build. Okay. And it does look like on this titaniummodel, you're doing some unique stuff with three D printingalready. Yeah, so we we use three D printing on all of our bikes.You know, it's not a gimmick. We use it to make sure that we'rebuilding the best bike for our customers and the best bike that wecan possibly put out into the world without you know, going to apoint where they're just, you know, this unobtainable pricepoint.
So we always three d print our y yolk. It just, it helps us haveflexibility and material choices for rider, weight, size use. We dothat on our mountain bikes and all of our drop bar bikes. Got it.And what was, what's sort of the quick origin story of the brand?Yeah, so I've got a a background in motor sports.
I've always kind of just fabricated things. Always been acyclist, you know, you can't grow up in Marin County and not ridebikes. And a couple years ago people finally just wanted to, youknow, they, they were knocking on the door wanting to buy bikesand, you know, I wanted to build good bikes. So, yeah.
Am I correct? The sort of origin started building. Hardtailmountain bikes. Yeah. That's definitely what we're known for. Okay.So our, our hummingbird model, definitely our top seller. Wellreceived, well reviewed and we're just looking to expand thatsuccess into the drop bar market. Nice. And working with bothtitanium and steel, obviously there's different challenges anddifferent learning curve around working with titanium.
Did you start doing titanium on the mountain bikes? We did.Okay. Yeah. So You know, titanium has just always been somethingthat was present, needed to be done. You know, it's like there's aright bike for everybody. There's a right material for everybodybased on use, based on needs, based on price point.
The way I like to say it right is your steel bike. It's yourCadillac, C T SS V ride's. Great. You can live with it day to day.It comes in at a good price point. The titanium bike is yourCorvette. It's sportier. It's faster, right? You know, maybe notthe greatest for taking the family to the park. But it serves apurpose as well.
Got it. What's the customer journey look like for you? Ifthey've discovered the brand, what does it look like from themgetting into contact with you for the first time to getting a bikein their door? Yeah, so we really try to maintain the quickest leadtime possible. Right now we're at four months. Our throughput isvery high.
We have a very manufacturable process right there in MarinCounty. If a customer wants a bike, they have options. You canorder a bike on our website. You can order your build kit on ourwebsite. You can email us, we can help you with sizing. It'sreally, you know, the door is open to, to the customer experiencethat's desired.
Okay, gotcha. Cool. Well I look forward to seeing you later thisyear at Adventure Revival Ride. Yeah. With the Marin County BikeCoalition and definitely have to check out your facility at somepoint. Definitely, yeah, we'll be moving into a new shop shortlyand we plan to have an open house, so we'd love to have youthere.
Fantastic, thanks. Thank you.
[00:23:28] Kyle | Pinebury: Can I get your nameand the brand? Kyle Rancourt. And the brand is Pine. Berry. Can youtell us a little bit about what you're showing here from PineBerry? Yeah. We make lightweight Marino, wool cycling apparel andactive wear. Nice. And where are you manufacturing? InMassachusetts. Our first production one was made in Massachusettsand we're also manufacturing in Allentown, Pennsylvania andHilderbrand North Carolina for our, our knitwear.
And when did you launch the brand? April, 2023. Okay. April ofthis year. Yeah. And what was it about wool and the type of woolyou're using that inspired you to go on this journey and start thebrand? I wanted to, mainly, I wanted to make the cycling appareland active wear that I wanted to wear. And I fell in love withlightweight, you know, performance Marino wool a long time ago.
And I haven't seen anybody really in the industry focus on that.It always seems like. It's sort of an afterthought for some of thebrands, like they'll have a small collection or a piece or two. Andso when doing research before starting this brand, I discoveredthis amazing fabric in, in yarn manufacturer outta New Zealandcalled New Yarn.
Okay? They have a patented yarn spinning technology. It's twistfree spinning. So when you, when you spin merino yarn and it getstwisted, you take out a lot of the natural benefits of the fiber.You reduce elasticity, durability, and loft. And so breathabilityand new yarn with their twist free spinning they're, they're ableto make a fabric that's almost nine times more durable.
It has 85% more elasticity. It's five times faster drying, andthe list goes on. It sounds like it just, Supercharges what we knowabout wool to begin with. Exactly. That's the perfect way to putit. So is it, is it still considered Marino wool or is this like anentirely new word we need to learn? That's a great question.
I still refer to it as Marino wool. Okay. But new yarn kind ofis, is branding it as performance wool. Yeah. Yeah. It'sinteresting, you know, you were talking about building this brandaround. Sort of purpose-built cycling clothing. And those was thatwas the cycling clothing you'd wanted to wear and Yeah.
Yeah. My experience, like I, I love Marino. I kind of thinkabout it from a hiking perspective and went on a bike packing tripand wanted to wear a t-shirt, so I grabbed a hiking Marino woolwool shirt. So it's super cool that you're focused on kind ofcycling as your core market. Obviously the clothing workseverywhere else.
Yeah. Do you wanna talk a little bit about, it seems like youhave both kind of performance tees. As well as jerseys, right?Yeah. Yeah. And actually I like that you brought that up. 'cause I,I wanted to make a point there about our performance tees. Eventhough they are meant for sort of all sports and all outdooractivities, they have some elements of, of cycling built intothem.
Like they're a bit longer than a typical tee. They're longer inthe back than they are in the front. And actually I'm working ondeveloping a tee that would have a. A zippered pocket in the backof it. Okay. Like a pullover tea that has a zippered pocket. So,nice. Yeah. What's the best way for people to learn more about thebrand and the products?
It go to our website, pine Bury Us. We have a ton of informationon there. We have a whole page dedicated to new yarn. We have awhole page dedicated to our story, you know, in, in addition todomestic manufacturing, all our products remain in the us. We'realso plastic free. All of our packaging and shipping materials areplastic free and recyclable.
And we have, you know, a real commitment to like sustainabilityin the environment. I love it. And are people ordering directlyfrom your website today? Yeah. You can order directly and we shipanywhere in the world. Okay. Yeah. One of the final questions I'llask you is, you know, oftentimes I think in, at least in my mind,historically, will got, will got, will got categorized as somethingthat I'm gonna wear when it's cold.
Yeah. Great. Can you dispel or affirm that statement? No, that'sa great question. It is not just for cold weather. Yeah, yeah,yeah. I wanna underline that we are actually specializing inlightweight wool that can be worn year round. In spring 24. We'llhave an ultra light Marino that would, will blow people away at howlight and fast drying it is and could be worn in, in the hottest ofclimates.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I knew that. I was teasing a little bit.Because I'm with you. It's like, I remember on that bike packingtrip, it was quite hot on during the days, and it's just a greatmaterial in terms of how it handles moisture, how it dries, how itfeels, and I'm, I'm a little bit surprised more people don'tunderstand that and embrace it.
Right. My, my favorite way to put this is to get in a little, alittle like sciency here. Our body's cooling system is evaporative,right? We're evaporative cooling system. So you heat up, you sweat.The, the, the sweat captures heat and when it evaporates, itcarries the heat away from your body. So you want a garment that'sgonna support that system.
Marina wool is by far the best to do that. It is, it's able towick moisture away from the body at the vapor stage, so before itturns into a liquid. So that's why it can dry fast five timesfaster than synthetics or conventional Marino. Yeah, this new yardMarino. Awesome. Thanks for sharing all that.
Yeah, thank you.
[00:28:39] Rich | Circa: All right. Can I getyour name and the brand? My name is Rich Fox and I'm the founder ofCirca Cycles in Portland, Oregon. You beat me to my next question,which is, where are you building? We're in Portland right now. Andyou're a Portland based builder? We are, yeah. We've been doingthis in Portland for, I started the company 10 years ago.
The first two years we're pretty much r and d. As you can see wedo things a little bit differently than some folks do, and thefirst couple of years were just spent basically in our undergroundlab. And we always with the same, we will get into what isdifferent about these bikes, but using this same technique from theget go, the underlying philosophy.
Yes. There were some things we and the first generationprototypes definitely are different from where we ended up. Sure.So why don't you talk about, the attributes of the bike that makeit different than almost anything I've seen today. Oh, okay. Sure.So what you're looking at is a bonded anodized aluminum.
Lugged frame. So we're anodized lugged and bonded aluminum. Andwhich you can also laser etch into, which is also another fun thingthat you brought. Pretty amazing finishes I see over there in thecorner. Thanks. So when we talk about lugs, and I did talk toanother builder who was working with lugs, which were the much moretraditional style that my father's road bike has, we're definitelynot talking about those type of lugs here.
We're talking about a lot more substantial. Parts of the bike inyour version of a lug? Yeah. In, I guess I'd have to, I'd have toask you what stands out as how sub What do you mean bysubstantially? I think this sort of oversize nature, like itappears to the naked eye. Oh, okay. That almost the entire kind ofseat collar area that's joining the top tube and the seat tube isone large lug rather than a petite.
Crafted one that got TIG welded. Okay. Yeah. There are a fewthings going on. So as I was, when we'd made the decision to getaway from welding altogether and work with the bonded assembly, weknew that we would, we'd also made the decision around the sametime that if we're gonna bond, we're gonna have to create our ownlug system.
If we're gonna create our own lug system, it's gotta be.Because, and we would've to create our own lug system because it'dhave to be something that Maxim maximizes the performancecharacteristics of the adhesive systems that we're gonna be using.So there's nothing off the shelf that you can buy that's going todo that.
So we'd have to engineer a solution that would handle that forus. Along the way we decided, okay, we don't want to cast thoselugs because the general volume strategies around bike framemanufacturing and the way that things. Change over even the waythat angles change across size variations in a frame.
'cause they don't scale geometrically or logically in a way.Yeah. We would have to, we would need some kind of a lugmanufacturing strategy that would be able to do lower volume andgive us incredibly precise control over certain aspects. Forexample, the tube to the tube to lug interface we need.
Super, super tight control at that bond gap. Yeah. And we'd alsoreally need to understand a lot about the bond surfacing itself. Sothe reason those lugs are somewhat beefy is that a few things aregoing on. One is that we are trying to maximize contact area forthe bond. Yeah for the bond.
Two, we are solving a problem of We want the thing to lookstout. Yeah. You in the way early days of of deciding what we weredoing, there were prototypes that we put in front of people that's,and they said, oh, that looks fragile. And if you're already doingsomething that's a bit unique and a little bit quite, is off thebeaten trail to some re in some respects, you need to do a.
W put some extra design work into a SW and keep things thatpeople might be concerned over. So what type of technique are youusing, say, for this head tube? Are you machining that out of ablock of aluminum? Yes. Everything, all of the connectives on theframe. So all of the lugs, the dropouts any connectives on the seatstays, et cetera.
Those are all proprietary things that we've designed, engineeredin c and seeded from solid blocks of aluminum billet. Gotcha. I'musing a combination of three, four, and five axis. C N C machines.Yeah. It's interesting when you look at the junction up here on theC tube connecting these tubes in that bolted in right.
Does that sort of create limitations around the sort of tirediameters that you can achieve for a gravel bike? No. No. That'sdefinitely that. While there are certain areas on this, the framethat we're looking at right now, that might be a little, that mighthave a restriction for what you can do that's not the, that's notthe, that's not the area.
Okay. So that particular solution that's going on there isdriven by the fact that the C NNC work that we do, the precisionthe complexity of the parts, the precision of the details, thequality of the finish work that we're trying to achieve makes thoseparts. And at a volume that we're not a hundred thousand a yearmanufacturer.
Yeah. The volumes that we're working at makes those parts prettyexpensive. So ultimately we have to find ways. Of elegantlyidentifying components in the frame assembly that we can do inhigher volumes so that we can offset the cost. So at the top of theseat stays those plugs, you'll see the same part.
This is the same part as what's on the other side, it's mirror.Yeah. So that's two of, two of the same part on the same frame.That's good. But now I can use that same part on any on any framesize. Gotcha. Which gives me some extra flex, so all of a sudden Ican really amortize out the cost of that part across lots ofdifferent frame sizes.
Yeah, I feel like this is a bike that needs to be seen to bebest understood, to Definitely encourage listeners to go and checkout the show notes and find a link to circa bicycles. Ridecirca.com. Right on. And yeah, just as far as like the customerjourney goes, if once someone discovers the brand, what does itlook like to get a bike underneath them?
Are you building fully custom bicycles or is it a stock range?We don't do, we found that we don't really need to do fully custom.Yeah. An interesting byproduct of our manufacturing strategy isthat because we have this modular kit of parts, essentially thatwe've developed over time is that it lets us, our, we consider itwe have three, three fit options.
Essentially, we have a standard geo which is suited towards. Themajority of the population from a arm and leg and torso lengthYeah. Standpoint. But we also are really easily able to create along reach or a short reach version of the same design. Yeah. Andthat's basically a free thing. So we're essentially doingsemi-custom geometry for free.
If you do have a fit scenario where you need to be upright oryou want to be more if you have a long torso. A short torso. Yeah.Or you have some kind of a, a. Physical limitation if you have lessmobility in your back or more mobility. Yeah. If you needed a sortof a higher stack would you adjust the machined head tube toachieve that?
Or is that not an area that you adjust? It's typically notnecessary. Okay. We, our size range right now is pretty broad. Our,we have the, our platform goes from an what we call our extrasmall, which Although you can't see it in our conversation here,this is the seat tube for our extra small, okay.
Which is for those folks listening imagine basically somethingabout the length of A B M X seat tube. So we created that for arider who had, I think she required a 711 millimeter standover.It's either seven 11 or eight 11. One of those, okay. But verysuper short stand. So we created like a 17 degree sloping top tubefor her.
And but now that's become our extra small platform. Nice. Coversa pretty petite rider. And then our extra large platform goes up to6 3, 6 4 riders. Okay. So between that size range and the abilityto pull the cock pin in and out we feel like we do a pretty goodjob of accommodating most.
G I'm sure most fit requirements. Super cool. And what is thetypical turnaround time? It depends on on load at any given time,but bare minimum is six weeks. And that just depends, but that'sbare minimum. And it can go out to two to three months depending,but sell them longer than that.
The only time we've ever had something that really stretched.Was during the nightmare of Covid times. Yeah. And nobody could getany parts. Yeah. So the frames would be done and we'd be sittingaround really hoping our order from shaman or RA would show up ofcourse. Which they never did well.
Super striking bikes and encourage people to go take a look at'em. Thanks for the time. Thank you so much for paying attentionfor for Karen.
[00:37:22] Devin | Story Street: Can I get yourname and the brand? Yeah. My name is Devin Ross and I am the ownerand the builder for Story Street cycles. How did you get startedbuilding? I've been working in the ski in the in and the bikeindustry since about 2006, and most of my experience was through onthe service side of things and retail and sales.
Kind of on a whim back in 2015, decided to take a framebuilding. Course at U B I in Ashland and kind of really enjoyed itand started doing some more kind of small custom building forfriends and family. And over the last few years have developed thatinto kind of our first run of production, small batch frames.
We do a. All road frame and then an all mountain frame. Cool.Let's talk about this all road frame. Does it have a, a, a sort ofmodel name or just your all road? It's just the ar. Okay. I havethe AR and the am What are you building this frame out of? So theframe is out of steel. It is kind of a combination of Columbussteel and a little bit of the kasai tubing from Japan.
The All of the hardware and all of the small components such asthe head tube, the bottom bracket, and dropouts are all fromParagon Machine Works. And then the finishing kits kind of are allthe color matched options from Wolf Tooth. And what size wheel areyou running on this bike? This current one is a six 50 B with 2.1tires on there.
Okay. The general frames are, Designed with clearance up to 45.I think usually like a 38 to a 42 for a lot of this type of ridingis kind of the sweet spot. But we can, we got clearance andeverything to go up to some bigger options. Nice. And what's sortof the, the customer journey when they discover you?
You mentioned you've sort of brought a small batch phenomenon.Mm-hmm. So you have a handful of bikes in stock. You typically tryto fit them on one of those models and Yes. So we do. On the allroad side, we have a 52, 54, 56, and 58 in the pre-made ones. Theframes are all kind of built and welded and ready to go.
And then when a customer is ready to to purchase them, then wewill kind of figure out what the overall paint scheme and the thehighlight. So the, all of the frames are gonna be painted, aregonna be powder coated to the customer specification. And then allof the finishing kit and everything, our decals, we try to go alongthe same kind of seven standard colors that wolf tooth does, justto make all of the, the matching and everything like that make youraccessorizing easy.
So that way we can still get the, the same custom kind of one ofa kind finish that that people can get with choosing their colorand choosing their finishing kit without the the longer lead time.For a full custom build. If people are still interested in doingkind of their own custom geometry we see that a lot with peoplelooking for a little bit taller of a head tube.
A lot of times people that have maybe longer torsos, shorterlegs and stuff, we still do offer those options to do a fullycustom in either of our. Or All Road or, or All Mountain. Okay. Andif people wanna find more out about the brand, how do they findyou? So we're on Instagram at story street cycles and then ourwebsite is story street cycles.com.
Awesome. Thank you. Cool.
[00:40:55] Paul | Pauls Components: Yeah. Can Iget your name and company? Paul Price Paul Component Engineering.Good to meet you Paul. And you too. Thanks. Yeah. I know you'vebeen around the industry for a long time making beautifulcomponentry outta California. The one area I wanted to talk to youabout though are these clamper disc brakes cable actuated, discbrakes.
It's something I've long seen on some of the sexiest bikesaround, but misunderstood because I had some old, I won't name thebrand. Mechanical disc brakes. That really didn't serve me well.This is true. This, yeah. The the cable breaks were always for thecheap bikes and there's certain advantages for cable breaks.
And I knew when we developed this thing that there had to besome people that just wanted to keep it simple, but really wanted areally good product and didn't necessarily enjoy bleeding theirbreaks that much. Yeah. And how, how are you able to achieve. Thestopping power of a hydraulic brake with a cable actuatedbrake.
That took about three years and about 10,000 prototypes. But wejust make everything to a much tighter tolerance, like we just madeit as good as we can. All those other cheap brakes come from Taiwanand everything is just smashed and squished to, to get made. Weactually machine to very tight tolerances, so everything fitstogether really nice.
We also bolted up a little bit and figured out a way to just gettons of power out of it. It go ahead And does it mount in the exactsame fashion as a hydraulic disc brake would on my bike exactly thesame. Exactly. The mounting is exactly the same. Yeah. Okay. And dothe different levers have different poll ratios that you need toconsider?
This is important. Yeah. The long pole lever, which was, is a vbrake lever that's called a long pole. And then you can buy theclamper with that arm or a shorter arm for like your road bikelevers and your short pole levers. We make something called acantilever. And then we also make a camp campy version because itpulls a completely different amount of cable as well.
And are those. Completely different versions of the brakebracket itself, or are they just a component? No. To you buy thebrake, which is not cheap. But you can just change one part tochange to match any lever that's around. Got it. And are we using atypical brake pad, disc brake pad in Yeah the pad is a, is came outof an avid model that.
It fits a whole bunch of different breaks and we just wanted topick something to where you could go in a bike shop in the middleof, the desert or New York City or wherever and they're gonna havesome pads in stock, so that's not a problem. Going back to my cablepole, breaks of my mountain bike of yester year.
Yeah. Now I remember cable stretch needed to be adjusted.Obviously you've got brake pads that'll burn out a little bit.Yeah. How do I deal with that with a clamper product? You firstthing you do is you install 'em and then you go on three bikerides. And what that does is it moves all the grease around that'sinside all the parts which fit very well together, all get cozytogether and the the pads bed into the, to the rotor real nice.
And after that, your housing is compressed as it's gonna getyour cable stretched on the initial stretch. And you're good to go.And one of your colleagues was showing me a little micro adjust youcould do on it, that it seemed like it would tighten the pad up. Isthat right? Yeah, both sides, there's adjustment which you canactually do on the road or trail, which is a really nicefeature.
Absolutely. Yeah. What's the best way for people to find outabout Paul's components? Paul comp.com. P a u l c o m p.com. AndAnd check that out. Send us an email, give us a call if you haveany questions. Perfect. Thank you. You're welcome.
[00:44:45] Aaron | Stinner Frameworks: Allright. Can I get your name and brand? Yeah. Aaron StennerFrameworks. Nice, Aaron. And where do you guys build out of? We arein Santa Barbara, California. Nice. And how long have you guys beenbuilding? I've been building full-time since 2012. And currentteam's been in place since 2 20 15.
How did you get into it in the first place? I was managing abike shop and running a pretty robust like fit department, so wewere doing a lot of fitting. And I ended up going to U B I to justlearn a little bit more about frame building and why angles and whythis and why that. And so I learned how to build bike at U B I andI came back and people heard that I knew how to build frames and itjust snowballed from there.
Yeah, that seems to be the way it works. It's friends andfamily. Yeah. Then extended friends. And then maybe I got abusiness on my hands. Exactly. Yeah. So then were you building withsteel at that point? Yeah, primarily steel. And I started doinglike lug bikes and braised bikes and then morphed into TIGwelding.
And we've been doing primarily TIG welding bikes since 2013. Andare the bikes typically custom built for the customer or is are youdoing small batch? So we do we don't we build the order, so wedon't have any inventory, but we do have sizing, size models. So wedo have a 52, 54, 56 kind of model based and we are model based,meaning like we have a gravel frame model and we have a roadmodel.
So model based, we have sizes, but we can do custom geometrydepending on what you need. And then we have a paint program that'ssimilar where we have pre-picked schemes or pre-designed schemes,and then you can iterate and design within that. Gotcha. Yeah, I'veseen a lot of really stunning sinners out there on the roads.
Thank you. Which is great. What is this bike that we're lookingat today? Yeah, so we have the, our new Refugio. So we've, ourRavel bike has been our refugio for many years. And this one, Thebig upgrades is we went from a 45 C tire to now being able to fit a50 C tire. Brilliant. Keeping Our chain stays still relativelyshort.
These are at like 4 28. And we have U D H compatibility, sorunning the universal STR universal trailer hanger. And it alsostill work with a transmission drive train. So on this bike we havetransmission on the rear like a road oriented crank set up frontwith a 42 tooth train ring. So you get this like really nice widerange. Mountain bike, road meets, road bike compatibility build,buildable. Yeah. Model. Those are our big changes. So U D H and 50C tire. And then we also are integrating all of our cablesinternally now on Okay. Gravel frames as well. And that's a dumbquestion. As you've built a frame like that, you're committed, yougotta go inside.
At that point. Yeah, to a degree. And that's kind of stuff we'reworking on. So like right now yeah you more or less need to pick abar, stem and headset that worked that way. I think everybody'slearning that this is a nice way to route this stuff. So we are wedo also have the ability to run like regular external cables andjust have 'em drop into the top of the headset as well.
Okay. So you could run traditional parts as well. Okay. Yeah. Soboth work. So you don't have to commit only to one one style.Gotcha. And what does the customer journey look like once theydiscover you? Like how much interaction are you having with me as acustomer prior to ordering? And then what does that timeline looklike to get a bike these days?
Yeah, so we have we just launched a configurator like literallylast Wednesday. We've been working on it for about a year. So youcan actually go on and design your pain scheme, build out your bikeonline and get a live quote and So you could have a very hands-offapproach if you're that type of customer.
But we also, our email's on there, we have a contact form rightthere. If you have any questions, you have any concerns, you canjust email us in. Yeah. And we're happy to answer any questions.And we do everything from the configurator, which is pre-picked,more or less to full-blown custom if you want it.
The configurator will give you a very guided tour of costing.And then if you want to go full custom, that's more of aconversation to have. Yeah. Gotcha. Just pick your own adventure. Ifeel like every time I come across a bike customizer, I lose tensof minutes of my life dreaming, changing, going backwards andforwards to try to find something wonderful.
Yeah. Yeah. That was the idea is we wanted people that don'twant to email in or don't have the time to do the emailing. Yeah.We wanted to give 'em a tool that they could sit out at the end ofthe night and play around with and get an idea about our brand andwhat things cost and what we're all about without having to have adirect conversation.
But we're there and we're ready when they want to have thatconversation. Yeah. Awesome. So remind us, how do we find you?Yeah, so Entner Frameworks is our website just tinderframeworks.com. We're on Instagram sinner frameworks. Those are ourtwo main points of contact. And yeah, let us know if you have anyquestions.
Perfect. Thanks for the time. Awesome, thank you.
[00:49:12] Thomas | Horse Cycles: Can I getyour name and brand? Thomas Callahan Horse Cycles. Thomas, how longhave you been building under the Horse cycles brand? 17 years.Amazing. Yeah. What got you started to begin with? I was doingsculpture fine art, so I had a studio and was ready to commit to anicer bike and decided to make the tooling and buy the tooling tobuild my own bike rather than invest in a, I think I was looking atItalian track bikes at the time.
Okay. And then people just started to ask me to build thembikes, which was really great. 'cause I wasn't, it was hard to fineart wasn't super accessible, conceptual fine art wasn't superaccessible to a larger audience. Yeah. Yeah. Super cool. And what'sthe bike that we're looking at today?
Are you all custom or do you have sort of product models? Yeah,they're product models, which is really nice. It's like a reallygood base to work from. So even the custom stuff, usually there's aplatform, all road platform, a road platform, a mountain platform.From there we go. Custom. This is a fully custom tie bike.
This is tie number five. And it's a all road adventure bike.It's got the envy adventure fork on it, tapered head tube supersupple Vermont Rider customer. So yeah, it's got a SCO fade fromthe head tube back and yeah. It's beautiful. Have you been workingwith Titanium for a while? I've been working with it for about fiveyears.
Just, before I put it out in the universe just to make sure thatI have the confidence and the skills and was playing around withit. 'cause I wasn't sure I really wanted to go that way. But it's afun material to grow into. You just really wanna make sure thatyou're doing it properly and what does a customer journey looklike?
If they wanted to work with you, just people reach out. Get somemore info about the process, get on the website, talk about theirneeds and see if, it would work out. And usually around four monthslead time and do a lot of full builds. But I really love connectingwith people.
That's one of the best parts other than being able to work withmy hands is really connecting with people. To build somethingtogether. And that connection is really why I do what I do, yeah.'cause, people are great. It's such a great journey as a customer,working with a builder to express like our collective vision forthis bike.
Yeah. And then receive it. I imagine that you get a lot of loveback from customers. Yeah, I do. And really the people that I'mable to work with, first of all, I'm so appreciative. Because ittakes a lot of effort for customers, but they're really amazingpeople. The industry is great 'cause, it's a BA based on physicaland mental fitness, and that's usually provides a pretty positive,personal platform and, they're good solid folks.
So a hundred percent. If people wanna find out more about horsecycles, where do they go? They can go to horse cycles.com, they cango to my Instagram horse cycles, gimme a phone call, reach out.I'm, I'm there and I'm not going anywhere. Perfect. Thanks for thetime. Thank you.
[00:52:13] Jonathan | Frameworks: Can I getyour name and, and company? Yeah. I'm Jonathan from FrameworkBicycles. We're based outta Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Nice. Andhow long have, have you guys been around? We've only been buildingbikes for about one year now, but my wife and I own and operate anaerospace tool and die shop Gotcha.
For about 11 years. So that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Why youhave the capability to do these amazing and aluminum lugs thatwe're looking at. That to me are like sort of one of the morestriking features of the bike. Thank you. Do you wanna just kind ofdescribe how this bike is constructed in the tubes and it lugs?
Yeah, so I guess we use a hybrid construction method that's notunique to us right now. Like Bastion's doing it, Atherton's doingit. Pivot just did it with that full suspension bike. I know you'rea gravel guy, but we machine bill it aluminum lugs and windfilament wound carbon tubes in house that are bladder molded andcured in in mold.
And then we bonded together. Essentially, the joint details areall handled by the C N C machine. Okay. So you've got sort of the,the joints of the bike, if you will, with these aluminum lugs thatyou're machining, and then in between carbon fiber tubes. Yep. Andyou were, you were mentioning that you have the ability to kind ofcustomize the carbon fiber tools for the cust Yeah.
Tubes. Yeah, the tubes. So we, we have a couple main things wecan change. Everything we do is inside of a three D modelingsoftware. So each bike is a total one-off. It's parametricallymodeled. So we enter your fit data tire clearance, all that kind ofstuff. The CAD model updates from there. So if I, if I needed sortof a, a taller head tube would Yep, totally.
Would that translate into, yeah, we, we would look at, well thecombination of top tube drop head tube, it's gonna changeeverything in the back of the bike from their back, right? Yep. Sowe'd look at your touch points for the bars, head tube lengths fromthere also with the four you wanna run. So that's gonna give youthat dimension there on the head tube.
And then, Even things like where these joints intersect oneanother, we can control that. So say you were a small rider andthis tires getting too close to the down tube, we can actuallybring that up a bit. Gotcha. Yeah. Gotcha. And what kind of, if Icame to you, what kind of modifications do you consider for thetubing on the carbon fiber side?
If it was a super heavy rider? Super tall rider? Yeah. Wallthickness is like, we can change tube diameters too. So I would saythere's two spectrums. If you're a really small rider, you don'tneed like a really round, big round tube. It's too much for you.Yeah, so my wife, like for example, I run a smaller down tube onthat so that the shape, the size of the tube and the shape is yourmain driver in terms of strength.
From there, what we tune is wall thickness, so how many layersof carbon we put into each tube, and then below that is the fiberorientation. Because we're C N C, winding them, we can whine fortorsional strength, bending, stiffness, anywhere in that spectrumto give the different compliance in the frame where you needit.
Since it's a somewhat novel approach to frame construction.Yeah. How do you describe to customers or would be customers, whatthe ride quality might feel like on this bike? It's hard. So we dohave some bikes out for review with media outlets right now, butthey're custom bikes that are built for those people.
Yeah. So they, they'll ride it, but it's like, if I made you abike for your fitting, it's gonna be a bit different. So what Iwould describe it as is kind of picking the best of all worlds. Youget some damping from the way the joints go together. You stillhave the kind of lightness and strength of carbon fiber, but withnone of the chatter or buzz or like squeak in the bottombracket.
'cause everywhere we're interfacing metal parts, it's going to ametal part on our bike. Okay. So really stiff bottom bracket shelf.And it they ride really quietly. Yeah. Someone else had mentionedthat. You know, this type of joint juncture up here does add a lotof rigidity to how the stays come into the tube here.
Like this detail here. Yeah. Yeah. So what we do to try to getsome of that back is, I'm a big proponent of top tube drop. Likebasically the, the stick out of your seat tube, your rideperception is gonna be way more on how your saddle's moving backand forth with frame flex than anything happening in the frame.
So that's why people are playing with things like the dropstays. To try to get that to bend in like an SS shape a little bit.Yeah. But if you just make this cantilevered bar longer, you'regonna get way more comfort from that. Got it. That's basically theeasiest way to do it. What does the customer journey look like todiscover you and how do they find you?
And then what does it look like from there If you wanna purchasethe bike? Yeah. 'cause we're super active on Instagram. That'sbasically how most people have found us. I'm big on just sharingprocess stuff while I'm in the shop. People either love it or atleast they'll like check it out quickly and come back like a monthfrom then.
So I'm on stories all the time showing how we machine stuff, howwe make the equipment that makes the bikes. So pretty much rightnow we're trying to get set up with a couple shops, but we'redirect to consumer. Yeah. So it's reach out to us. I'll email youback. We typically recommend that if you're not very confidentabout your fit, like where your touch points are on the frame thatyou work with the fitter local to you.
Yeah. Send us that detail. The discussion from there is whattype of bike are you looking for? Road bike, gravel bike in thatspectrum. Mountain bike. So your touch points and the style of bikeyou want kind of dictate the geometry we go to from there and thenit's ticket deposit and we ship you a bike in like four to eightweeks.
Super cool. Tell me the website and Instagram handle frameworkbicycles.com and on Instagram where framework bikes. Awesome.Thanks.
[00:57:29] Zack | Bosch: Can I get your nameand the brand you represent? Sure. Zach Kreel and Vapor PropulsionLabs. We do Bosch, pinion, supernova, and three by three hubs.Right on. So Bosch has been making electric bicycle motors for howlong? Gen One came out in Europe in 2010. Started working with 'emin 2009 over a 18 month period of time to, to work on thatproject.
Gotcha. Yeah. What's been curious to me is obviously, like manyof us are aware of the bigger brands doing e-bikes in their lineup,but over the last few years I've started to see builders likeJeremy CIP build with your product. So building, a custom bikeeffectively. Yeah. And accommodating the Bausch motor in the bottomof it.
How does that come to be and what kind of trends do you see inthat area? Yeah, so we, we are definitely seeing the customhandmade guy come and express interest. A lot of times there isthis misconception that this is way complicated and in generalyou're replacing the BB with a motor node that can be welded injust like a BB shell can and you're accommodating that.
And we try to cut the red tape for the handmade guys to be ableto make sure, or to reassure them. That this is pretty easy. Soyeah, when you see from an engineering standpoint, from a bill ofmaterial of the electric standpoint, all that stuff, we hold theirhand to to get them to make the first one, and then they're readyto roll.
Yeah. When you see the raw frames that they're producing, it'sobvious oh, you can just bolt the engine there on the bottom, andthat part's clear. But as you look at what's required to kind offunction and power and control the motor, There's more to it thanthat. So what are the other components of the system that they needto be thinking about as they're building these bikes?
Well, a lot of times, you'll think about the end consumer andyou'll say, okay, is this gonna be, for somebody that is running acargo bike, if it's a, if it's a touring, a gravel rig, if it's a,if's a's pavement bike, if it's a car, alternative bike, thoseparticular frame builders will potentially.
Alter the gauge of their tubing. Potentially. It depends on howmuch load is on it, but that end customer is driving where thesewill go. And from our standpoint the Bosch system is super robust.It's tested all the way to E M T V standards now and that typicallyworks for everything that everybody in this building is gonnamake.
What kind of controls are necessary to connect to the motor? Sothe motor, the botch system is a, it's a closed system. So there'sbasically, the hardest system is the motor connected to thebattery, and then there's the display. The motor has the brainsinside there. It measures the human input at a thousand times asecond, roughly.
So super fast. And then it it connects to the battery. There's acommunication between battery and motor, and then there's alsocommunication to the. To the head unit or your smartphone, all ofthat stuff is, its ecosystem and they're all required to have onthe bike itself. And is it a pedal assist system?
So it's just adding wattage to my It is, yeah. Personal output.So it measures your input super super accurately. And then youlevel, you choose the level of assistance eco up to turbo andeco's, like 50% of your input turbo is up to 400% of your input.Gotcha. And I see behind us. It's not only a tandem, it's atriple.
Is that right? Yes, that is right. So that's a, that's ourconcept bike. My daughter's the one who's gonna be in the middlethere. So lucky her. That particular rig is cool because the middlestoker, that section of the frame can be removed and then it canturn into a tandem. That's incredible. We brought that one here forframe builders to see as like the most complicated bike that theycould ever imagine.
And then give them the perspective of okay, a single is supersimple compared to that. Yeah. And is there's just one, is therejust one Bausch engine in that bike? Yep. Okay. Yeah. And it's a,that's a dual battery. There's a three by three internal gear hubin the back with e shift. So electronic shifting, there's aBluetooth wireless controller to the bar for shifting.
There's also a Bluetooth wireless Bosch sensor on the bar tochange your level of assist. And then of course it's full beltdriven. The Captain Stoker one and Stoker two are all in times.It's a lot going on that rig. That's super cool. As listeners areinterested in exploring Bausch products what are the brands otherthan the custom brands that you typically see them in?
So you'll see Bosch on some of the brands like Trek that, thatare doing many thousands of of e-bikes a year. You'll see them on.Niche products like CoMotion got a tandem. You'll see them on Terrat Trike or Cat trike. Recumbent Tricycles. There's also othercustom guys right now like Cycle Chinook over in Vermont andFirefly in, in Massachusetts.
So there this kind of craft built market is starting to come up.Quickly. Yeah. I think it's gonna be an interesting trend to watchbecause Absolutely. It makes sense. If you're someone who lovesbikes and you wanna get a bike built from your favorite builder,but you've found eist to be what you need for whatever reason orwhat you want.
Yeah. Like why not get it from your favorite builder? Yeah. Welike this Portus mid in Germany that's That's a cargo rig, it'spurpose built for cargo. The omnium behind me is similar to that,and it tends to start to broaden people's horizons of okay, I candish my car, I can be empowered a little bit more, but being ableto haul more stuff and it it just in, in my opinion it's a greatthing for the market.
If people find Bausch online, do you help them find builders whoare. Our building with it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So some,sometimes the end consumer's, the one who, who goes up to somebodylike a breadwinner or you name the builder and say, Hey I'd reallylike to have a an e-bike system, and can you put me on thelist?
That, that pressure helps. And then we talk and we talk withthose those builders and make sure that they're equipped to be ableto. Build that first bike and all the other ones after that. Yeah.Super cool. Thanks for the time. Yeah. Yeah, you bet.
[01:03:33] Randall, Sam and Craig: All right.I'm here at the tail end of my day at the Made Bike Show inPortland, Oregon. Ran into Randall and Sam from Logos and ThesisBikes. I thought it'd be cool since I had you guys to just talkabout, what are some things that stood out to you today. We've, thelistener, will have just heard a bunch of conversations I've hadalong the way, but just zooming out, I know it's fresh in ourminds.
What inspired you? What, what got you stoked today? There are aton of incredible bikes all under one very big roof over here. Butone of the, one of the builders that I was really excited to checkout coming into this show was framework Bikes out of nearbyToronto, Canada. And they've been sharing their road up to Maid andthe process that goes into the refinement of their new bike projectin incredible detail with a ton of transparency.
Which has been really interesting to watch. Totally. I, of allthe bikes I've seen here, that one and the one from circa usingsimilar technology was the ones that were the most thoughtprovoking for me. Just this idea of a new approach to lugs combinedin their case with carbon fiber, which they're working on in-housein their facility there.
It just fascinated me to think about what would those ridequalities be of a bicycle like that? Super striking to look at, buthow will it ride? Yeah, and they're taking a construction processthat we saw decades ago and unfortunately went really awry withalloy lugs and carbon tubes.
Back in the day it was something that was tested out and therewere a lot of failures associated with the bonding agents andgalvanic corrosion and it's really cool to watch as he, henavigates that using his aerospace background. To introduceproduction techniques that like plating his lugs and using three Mglass microspheres, ak fancy sand to make sure that the tubes areperfectly spaced and have good bonding all the way around to makefor a really reliable and durable product.
Because you know a lot of people who live through the era of thecarbon tubed allo frames. Grew to know them as pretty scary, but itseems like the attention to detail that he is brought is gonna makethem reconsider their aspersions. Yeah, I was actually veryimpressed with that as well.
It was my first introduction. I haven't been following them andthe the amount of precision that he's able to accomplish in hismachining. And then dealing with things like galvanic corrosionthrough those, those little glass globules, which I believe arehollow too not hollow. They offer them, they, they do make themhollow, but he's using a solid microsphere because he needs thatcompressive strength.
Got it. And I had one of the original cannondale system sixes,which was also aluminum exposed aluminum lugs with a, somemechanical interlace with the carbon tube coming in. And I hadgalvanic corrosion issues. And the way that he's doing the platingto reduce the, what is it, the galvanic potential across.
And then also that glass layer. I mean we put fiberglass in ourframes on any interface with aluminum specifically to deal withthat galvanic corrosion issue. Just so to see that level ofprecision and attention to detail and addressing the primaryconcerns with that type of construction was super cool to see,especially from a small small builder.
Yeah, I think my first road bike was a giant carbon fiber tubeswith aluminum lugs, and it was the wiest thing I ever rode. So thisis going back 25 plus years. So I'm glad to see the technologyevolve and as we said, it's a striking look visually for the bike.Yeah. I've always loved the look of that and it's nice that he'sjust taken it so far and to the extent that he's winding his owntubes, single strand of carbon fiber being wound on A C N C orlathe, I think.
And and then being transferred to a mole to get really goodresin extraction. Pressurized at, I think 400 p ss i to really getlike every drop of excess resin and all of the voids pressed out ofit. I think he's he is gonna be producing an incredibly highquality product. Nice. What else is on your list, Sam, on not theother end of the spectrum, but a very different end of things.
I believe it's to is out of Austin, Texas and they're makingthese stunningly beautiful steel bikes. Where they're adorned withbeautiful beautiful small illustrations throughout the frames. Allof these, all these I mean it's like almost like little tattoos onthe bike in a way.
Yeah. Some of them three dimensional, some of them not. Yeah.And also doing accessories that are being handcrafted like bells.And these bar ends and top caps that are inlaid with beautifulturquoise. It. It's like an level of artistry that you don't seetoo often. I think calling them an accessories is not even it'sbicycle jewelry.
Yeah. Like some of, he had some headset spacers that I couldimagine around, around my finger, right? As a ring. Like reallythat sort of gorgeous attention to detail. I really wanted some ofhis stuff on my bike. It was very inspiring. And the bikes alsolook like, of course, they're super well, designed and fabricatedand they should ride.
Fantastically too. But yeah, really taking things in a verydifferent direction than, the fighter jet aesthetic that the bigbrands have been been doing for a long time and taking things in amuch more painterly and it's not, I don't wanna say quaint, butit's very charming.
Nice. And do you have a third on your list? It's, I would sayit's impossible to pick, a top three out of all of 'em. But I dothink it's worth calling out a hot salad and lunchtime who. HotSalad is B vivid. And lunchtime is her and Sean Eagleton, Ibelieve, working together. And they are, they're doing USfabrication for a number of different brands at a really highlevel.
And it's cool to see these shops that are really innovating andgetting production batches out at a super accessible level, butstill making things domestically at a very high quality. Yeah, it'sbeen really cool to see bees. Journey. So I met her in SanFrancisco years ago when her and another mutual friend were gettingready to take their first welding class.
This is over a decade ago. And since then she has, she was aninstructor at U B I, the was it United Bicycle Institute also inOregon. And worked for another very reputable frame fabricator. Andso to see her going on her own with both her own brands and herown. Fabrication house for other brands is really neat to see thatarc of her in, really from the beginning of her career.
Yeah. It's been interesting. I was talking to another framebuilder who's been around the block for a while and he was talkingabout how they're working with her Yep. And how he was getting alot of personal satisfaction out of mentoring her a little bit in,in the bicycle world. Yeah.
And just being part of her journey. And he expressed a, a strongdesire to just, I just want to see her. Be successful in thosebrands, be successful. And there were quite a few brands hereactually that I had spoken to that had a bike made by her or herand her partner. Nice. It's interesting to see.
So they, nice, they got something good going on. Yeah. What's onyour list, Randall? So not in the gravel sphere, but Albatross hasa dual suspension bike made out of steel with a really interestinglinkage design. That they fabricated entirely on their own with adomestic c n C partner for all the linkages and so on.
That's absolutely beautiful. So that was one of my highlights tosee that in person. Actually just had a, what we call that littleevent with Matt at Enduro. Just a little speakeasy, I should say,with one of our former guests. And it's also cool to see thosecollaborations emerge as well.
So that was one for me. I really like Story Street. They have abike that was really focused on making a high quality bike that wasaccessible to young riders. So it's really focused on yo local nacawas it NA National, they youth cycling high school level cycling abike specifically for that crowd in his booth.
So that was another highlight for me. I'm gonna be doing anepisode real soon, or it's already recorded with Brad Bingham. And,he had a reputation for having the best welds in, I think he wontwice at nabs. And so I had a conversation with him, which you'llhear soon enough.
And actually seeing the welds in person and seeing the bikes inperson, my first impression was like, this is like CAD model levelof precision. How is this humanly possible? Just everythingabsolutely perfectly aligned. These buttery welds where the, yousee the faintest little difference in, I don't know what thosefeatures are called, but the waves of the welds and it's all reallysmooth and evenly spaced and the super elegant ex extreme degree oftechnical excellence on those bikes.
Yeah. It's such a pleasure walking around here and seeing thecraftsmanship that these frame builders put into their work and.That's the reason to make the trip up to made or any handmade bikeshow, in my opinion. Absolutely. Yeah. Without mentioning numbertwo, you can't really address craft 'cause they're actually doingsome of the most stunning bikes as well.
They're also doing tie like bam, but they're doing a level ofadornment that it's an eye watering price point. But but the bikesthat they make are just, Arresting, they've they've done a a travelbike that, that has couplers that are not a standard Ss n scoupler.
If you didn't know any better, you wouldn't even be able to seethem. You can't even see them. Yeah. And and the finishes thatthey're doing are also incredible as well. Nice. Nice. A couplebooths that I'd shout out while I was here, in addition to what youguys are talking about, one would be Newhouse.
They're building out of Marin County, so I'd been familiar with'em, actually a neighbor of ours. A ridership member, Eli Binghamgot one of their hardtail mountain bikes and they're just debutingboth the titanium and steel gravel bike here and doing someinteresting thing with three D printing around how they'reconstructing that bike.
So that was super cool to see and super cool to us to have MarinCounty represented. We should also just give it a shout out here toEli as being one of the most helpful members of the ridershipcommunity. Thanks, Eli. Thank you. You, Eli? Yeah. The secondunexpected one here was seeing Bausch and their electricmotors.
And I'd begun to see guys like Jeremy Cecip building customframes and putting the Bausch electrical motor in there. Obviouslye-bikes are a big trend and we're seeing them more and more. It'spretty natural that we'd start to see custom builders working withthat. And Bausch seems to be the one sort of engine system that ismost easily utilized and built into a frame.
I don't have a lot of reference points there as you're lookingquizzically to the sky Randall, but I see more of them than others.Yeah. And the coolest thing in their booth I saw, so a, I don'tknow what a three person bike is called, obviously a tandem is one.It was a triple and he was describing to me that an about e-bikemotor in it as well.
But he was saying via the ss n s coupling, he can take the thirdperson out and make it a tandem. Oh yeah. Super rad. Justconceptually blowing my mind kind of bike that I saw here with s ns couplings or, yeah. Coupling. Yeah. I believe it was s and scoupling. I think I've seen, I think I've seen Craig EY do that aswell.
And I think I've seen, I don't know if it was Craig or someoneelse, but do it where you could actually have one bike, two bikes.Yeah. Two first, no, 3000. Yeah. That's super cool. I've oftenheard of tandems referred to as relationship accelerators, andthey'll either lead you straight into a very serious and lovingrelationship or off a cliff and your relationship will end indemise.
But wherever you, I would imagine adding the e-bike elementmaybe would. Would slow things down in, in the emotional sense.Maybe not the physical sense, you never have to question if if thestoker is pedaling or any of that. So I think it's wherever yourrelationship is going, you'll get there faster on a tandem.
Yep, yep. I love it. And then I did wanna shout out the guys atPine Bury, they're making wool clothing and it's easy to categorizewool clothing as, oh, it's what you wear in the winter, which is anantiquated kind of concept about wool. But they've actually workedwith a Marino wool vendor who's got a proprietary weave in theirMarino wool, which basically supercharges all the attributes ofMarino.
So it's better cooling, better stretching, better feel. So superexciting. They're making 'em currently in Massachusetts, but Ibelieve they're moving to a factory in Pennsylvania. But it'sAmerican made. The founder has a family legacy in shoemanufacturing in Maine. So just super fascinating. Hope to get 'emon the podcast later, just to hear more of that US manufacturingstory and give a little shout out to wool as a material where inMassachusetts I might have to pay a visit.
I'll point you to their booth. Okay. Sounds good. Yeah they hadsome cool stuff going and I talked to 'em a bit. It seems likethey're using a nylon substructure basically in the weave. Yeah.And that allows, obviously nylons gonna strengthen the wool, butthey're also doing it in a way that increases the loft of the woolfibers and allows them to work better both in their, in itsinsulating and cooling properties.
So is that a nylon core around which the Marino goes, or, yeah.I am not a textiles expert, but it seemed like the nylon wasstrictly it was not part of the main weave at all. It was just usedstructurally to reinforce it. But yeah, I'm a huge fan of Merino. Ilive in Los Angeles where it is often quite sweltering hot, and Ihave transitioned almost all my socks to Merino wool and slowly butsurely transitioning some of the more expensive pieces liket-shirts to Merino as well.
Same. Nice. And I feel like we shouldn't end the broadcast on aclothing company, although it is cycling clothing. I was happy tocatch up with friend of the pod, Chris McGovern. Chris has been along time member of the cycling family, well known for his CycloCross and supportive Cycl CROs.
Racers also had his custom carbon fiber construction brandMcGovern cycles for a long time. He's launching a new brand calledSeeker that's both both titanium and and steel bikes. And more of aproduction mindset, but super exciting, interesting story that hetold earlier on the podcast.
During Covid it's, he just needed something to do. So he boughta sewing machine and started sewing and was doing bags, rear bagsfor bicycles and a whole bunch of other stuff to support somerunning he was doing. And he fell in love with the seeker brand andreally loved the vibe of the name.
So he is putting it out there in the world and launching thesenew gravel frames to the world right now. Ooh, exciting. I'll haveto check those out. I wonder every time. So I realize I've had the,who's. Seeker they call me the seeker in my head, this whole show.Every time I walk back that booth.
I wonder if there's any inspiration. You blame Chris for that.Any final thoughts before we sign off? Yeah, if you haven't, sothis is the first year of made here in Portland and someone who'sbeen to a lot of industry events and trade shows and so on, I cansay that the crew here has put on something special.
The venue is fantastic. The vibe has just really been wonderful.And if you have the opportunity, I'm sure that this is gonna happenagain next year because it seems to be a wild success. Reallysomething special and really excited to have had the opportunity tobe a part of it and next year to maybe have a bigger presence.
Yeah. Awesome, Sam. The one big takeaway is that, there, thereare a bunch of incredibly creative people out there and they'reputting their passion into making some of the most fun bikes thatyou could possibly imagine. Yeah, definitely take the time to takea look at all the galleries floating around online.
And I hope you enjoyed the the conversations that Craig broughtyou from some of these innovative minds. Yeah, for sure. I don'tenvy the builders sitting in their booths the next two days isquite hot here in Portland, but so much enthusiasm from thePortland cycling community. They really seemed to have showed upfor this inaugural event and we wish them much success 'cause weneed more shows like this in the world.
So until next time, here's defining some dirt under yourwheels.
