Interbike Custom Bicycles Update III

Interbike is in 3 months.  Luckily we are starting to make some better progress than we have for the first 9 months of these projects.  Progress has been moving.  A road frame has been completed and is on it’s way to the artist.  Once again Artist Geoff McFetridge will design and paint one of our projects.  I can’t thank Geoff enough for this as his work is truly amazing and adds a whole new world to the bikes.   Take a look at the Ruegamer that he did for us last year.   This year he is not only doing the design for us, but will be painting it personally to really keep the special artisan look and feel.  

However since the painting has not yet begun we’ll look at some other stuff.  The building of some custom rims has been finished and they are on their way to paint as well.   While I’d love to be able to show you how the frames and rims are built, I can’t nor can I disclose too many details.  But luckily there are some things we can show and talk about.  All the rims are hand built, while it may look like this rim is being drilled it isn’t, it’s having the bead hook finished and smoothed.  

Then the rims are left in a rack to wait for quality control check, a final cleaning, and decal installation.  In our case they’ll be left blank as these will also be custom painted.

Of course we need something to hang those wheels on, which means having a couple of frames built.  Again we’re not allowed to show everything but we did come up with some stuff.  First we have the mandrels that are used for rolling tubes.   So once the proper mandrel is selected you need some carbon.

Carbon is cut and rolled.  Here you can see a cut piece being rolled.  Then once it’s wrapped on the mandrel,

some magic voodoo happens and just a little while longer it turns into some of these.  Complete tubes ready to ship off to the frame builder to be mitered and built into complete frames.

Typical chain and seat stays are built differently, like the rims they are molded and like the rims I can’t really talk about or show anything other than a completed one.   Look for more updates as the show gets closer and closer.

Attached below is a complete gallery with a few additional images to those in the post.  Some extra images include the carbon finishing tools, carbon cutter, and some completed tubes and rims.