The Pull

This week, I’m devoting the show to frame builder Roland Della Santa who passed away last weekend at the age of 72. Della Santa is most famous for helping to launch Greg LeMond into bike racing; one of the earliest shots of LeMond winning a bike race is of him wearing a Della Santa jersey astride one of the builder’s bikes.Della Santa was a builder at a crucial time of development for cycling in the U.S. He was both a builder and a racer during the era when the likes of Gary Fisher, Tom Ritchey and George Mount were ascending the ranks. It’s worth noting that he was among the very earliest builders in the U.S. and his bikes and teams were an integral part of the rise of racers and racing in Northern California.My guests this week are Don Walker of the North American Handmade Bicycle Show, longtime friend Jan Johnson, Greg LeMond biographer Daniel De Visé, Gary Fisher (yeah, that Gary Fisher), Della Santa's assistant Jake Barrett and Olympic Silver Medalist Inga Thompson.

In the second part of my interview with Tom Kellogg, we begin with a discussion of geometry for track bikes, and while this subject may not seem super-compelling on its face, it brings in a very interesting discussion of position, weight distribution and handling geometry on the bike. As a result, it's an opportunity to hear Kellogg talk about something on which he is an acknowledged master.One of the other truly extraordinary details of Spectrum's steel frames is the fact that they make each of their own lugs, rather than buying them from a tubing manufacturer or distributor. We discuss why they make their own lugs and how Spectrum's relationship with Seven Cycles and American Bicycle Group (the parent of Litespeed) works.Tom announced his impending retirement recently, and we discuss how that's going for him and what it has done to demand for Spectrum bikes.

This week my guest is Tom Kellogg of Spectrum Cycles. Kellogg’s career in the bike industry spans more than 40 years and includes relationships with brands like Merlin, American Bicycle Group and Time. His bikes have won more dozens of national championships and even world championships, which is why you’ll see the rainbow stripes on each frame carrying the Spectrum logo. I first met Tom in the 1990s when he was standing in Merlin Metalworks’ booth at the Interbike trade show. I commented on his raspy voice, thinking it was a symptom of the show, but he informed me that he has a paralyzed vocal cord, which makes his voice raspy on a full-time basis. What stayed with me about Tom and has only grown since then is his incredible attention to detail. I’m not sure I’ve met anyone in the bike industry who gives more thought to tubing diameters, butt lengths and wall thicknesses and how they ultimately contribute to how a bike rides. Tom and I really got on a roll in our conversation and it ran long enough that we will split it into two installments because his answers are just too good to chop down. There are some moments where his audio breaks up a bit due to a less than perfect Skype connection; sorry about that.

This week my guest is frame builder Steve Rex. Back in 1997 I moved to Redondo Beach, Calif., and began doing the local group rides. There was a guy on that ride who wasn’t on a Trek, Specialized or any of the other big brands. He was on a Steve Rex and because he threw a draft like a Mac truck, I was fond of sitting on his wheel. It gave me ample time to study the contours of the frame and the more time I spent on his wheel, the more I came to appreciate that bike.Fast forward a year and he ordered another, this one with oversize tubing. I arranged to shoot that bike for Bicycle Guide’s Hot Tubes column. I interviewed Rex by phone and got an introduction to him and his work.At this point, Rex has been building for 32 years. He’s best known for his fillet brazing, but he has a command of lugged construction as well as TIG welding. And of the many builders I’ve met over the years, I doubt I have ever met anyone whose local presence is as strong as Rex’s is in his home of Sacramento, California.

No. 22 is a newcomer on the custom bike scene. The company was founded in 2012 by Bryce Gracey and Mike Smith on the idea that titanium just rides better. After working with a couple of different contract shops that produced prototypes for them, they settled on Saratoga Frameworks—the operation that rose from the ashes of Serotta Competition Cycles—for their production. Just one problem: the operation shut down a week after No. 22 placed their deposit. Some people would have been discouraged enough to give up. Not Smith and Gracey. They believed in their idea enough to hire the core employees from Saratoga Frameworks, buy some mills and other machines, and set up shop in Johnstown, New York. This year at the North American Handmade Bicycle Show, No. 22 arrived with a show-stopping bike. The Aurora is a performance bike with the manners of an Italian stage-race bike—capable of standing up to anything you can deliver to the pedals, but without the nervous handling found in many race bikes. It features a carbon fiber seat tube with a titanium seatmast topper. The exclamation point to the bike was a set of titanium fenders anodized in a gold/purple fade. In my many years of attending and judging the awards at NAHBS, it was one of the most impressive bikes I've ever seen, and that's no small feat when displayed in a room full of everyone's best work. I wanted to learn more about the company and how they've gone from a concept based on outsourced production to one of the most sophisticated manufacturers of titanium bikes on the market, and did it in only seven years.

This week my guest is frame builder Nick Crumpton. We may be in the golden age of frame building thanks to the fact that some of the finest steel frames ever produced are being built today. That didn’t stop Nick Crumpton from deciding he wanted to apply his knowledge to carbon fiber. Crumpton is one of a handful of builders who works with carbon fiber. Mostly, it is a material used by much larger manufacturers in much bigger factory settings. With more than 10 years of experience under his built, though, Crumpton is one of a handful of builders on the planet who will produce a 100 percent custom carbon fiber frame, and he does everything, from wrapping tubes to paint and assembly in his shop.

To hear Aaron Barcheck tell it, he wasn't even planning to be a frame builder when he went to UBI to take their titanium frame building class. He definitely wasn't thinking of starting a brand. But after finishing the class and working for Dean Titanium, well, one thing let to another and now Mosaic Cycles is turning 10 years old. Since the launch of Mosaic, Barcheck has built the company from just him into an operation with half a dozen employees and one of the few operations that can reliably compete toe-to-toe with the likes of Seven Cycles and Moots. More recently, Barcheck purchased Spectrum Powder and Paint Works. It's not like Barcheck didn't have enough on his plate, but the purchase gave Mosaic a chance to better the quality of finish on their framesets while continuing to serve the custom frame building community.

In the annals of the North American Handmade Bicycle Show few builders have been as celebrated as Curtis Inglis, the man behind Inglis Cycles and Retrotec. Inglis has taken awards home more than a half dozen times from the show, due in no small part to the artful curves of his Retrotec frames. Inglis is likely also the only builder on the planet to build frames under two different brands. His Inglis frames are reasonably straightforward in that they all share straight tubes, while the Retrotec frames are known for curves that a boat builder would appreciate. While Retrotec wasn't Inglis' creation, he took what began as mountain bikes inspired by the Schwinn Excelsior cruiser frames on which mountain biking was founded and ran with the inspiration, both beefing up the frames to prevent them from breaking and riffing on the one idea until he had created a whopping seven different styles. In addition to his work as a frame builder, Inglis has an interest in restoring old cars and scooters. I decided to drive to his shop in Napa to interview him, as well as take a zippy ride in his Woolsley, which is like a Mini Cooper, but with some funky flair that only the English could manage.  And believe me, seeing the tallest builder I know fit into the second smallest car I've ever seen is a sight I'll never forget.

My history with Brad Devaney goes back more than 30 years to Memphis, Tennessee, when we were both students at the University of Memphis and working as wrenches for the Peddler Bike Shop. Even then, Brad was impressive. His work was as thorough as it was efficient. After I moved away, he went back home to Chattanooga and changed his major to engineering. As fate would have it, he went to work for Litespeed Titanium and ended up designing some of the more beloved titanium bikes ever produced. Fast forward 25 or so years and Devaney is still playing with titanium. As an employee of American Bicycle Group, he designs bikes out of titanium for Litespeed and out of carbon fiber for its sister brand Quintana Roo, which is known for its triathlon bikes.

This week I’ve got a twofer for you. I’m interviewing two people responsible for creating new clothing for Pearl Izumi. Cory Hibbard is an apparel designer who has worked on a variety of products, from their BikeStyle line of casual but cycling-functional apparel to new jersey designs hitting bike shops this spring. She likes to call her work “adventure-powered design.” My other guest is Cory’s co-worker Sarah App, who is a product developer at Pearl Izumi. Where Cory’s work is conceptual, Sarah’s work is much more nuts-and-bolts. It is her responsibility to take a design and create the physical garment. She specs the fabric, what stitches are used to construct it, the kinds of thread, and the range of fit.