Now in its second year, the Handmade Bicycle Show Australia (HBSA) is a place for Australia’s thriving maker community to come together and show off their wares. Every 10th bike in the room was a gem awaiting trails. Here we bring you eight bikes from the show, seven of which are Australian.
Prova Cycles' prototype Ripido Party Ti hardtail combines custom butted tubes and in-house produced 3D titanium printed components. The custom cut titanium tubing removes previous design limitations of the steel model (a bike that won Best in Show at last year’s Bespoke show), and the bike now features a 495mm reach, 1225mm wheelbase, 75-degree effective seat tube angle (with fork sagged) and a "not too steep" 66-degree head angle. It's sized for Prova’s Mark Hester himself, who stands at 174cm. There is no paint on this frame, it's all anodisation done by Nine Volt Colour.
Both chainstays use 3D printed yokes to add stiffness and allow clearance for 29x2.6in rubber. Chainstays are 430mm.
Hester chooses a wider 86.5mm T47 (oversized threaded) bottom bracket shell as it allows the chainstays to be set further apart.
A cut-away of a Prova 3D titanium printed dropout. Prova Cycles share a workshop space with Bastion Cycles – one of the first company's in the world to use 3D printed titanium in cycling. The lattice internal construction is the genius of Bastion.
The 3D printed dropouts can (and will) be varied for each individual bike. They also provide an incredibly clean look.
Hester even designed his own 3D printed seat clamp for the bike. This twin-bolt design helps to spread the clamping force over a greater surface area, and therefore provides a secure hold without causing pinching or stiction issues with dropper posts.
With the Beechworth MTB Park in his backyard, Shane Flint started building his own steel bikes a few years ago. Last year the fabricator and mechanical designer showed off a 29er trail hardtail, and this year he’s stepped it with this 170/150mm enduro rig.
This is the second ever dual suspension from TOR Bikes. It features a 64.5-degree head angle and 75-degree seat tube angle. "It’s downhill centric, with anti-squat better suited to descending than climbing, I then rely on the valving in the shock to get back up hills," said Flint, the bike's creator.
"Being a single pivot, keeping it stiff is a challenge. The bearing arrangement is not complicated, but I’ve got needle roller bearings on the inside on a 15mm aluminium axle. And then the swing arm plates clamp onto needle roller thrust bearings to spread the load out over a large area."
A little laser cut 4130 steel plate gusset is used to help keep the rear end tracking.
Like many steel bikes at the show, this one is fillet brazed together and then hand filed for a smooth finish. Expect to pay AU$4,500 for one of these custom frames.
Egress started with making BMX's and recently progressed to hardtails and gravel bikes. Pictured here is Egress' latest fast XC 29er hardtail, made for the builder himself. Despite its steel construction, it weighs just 8.3kg.
Egress is a small steel custom bike company run by Jimmy Röstlund out of a workshop in Melbourne, Australia. Paint is done by local painter Bikes by Steve
Egress is another builder who uses fillet brazing for frame construction. The stainless steel dropouts are silver soldered.
Cjell Monē of Monē Bikes had flown all the way from New Mexico, USA. to be at HBSA. There he showed his new "fun and poppy" hard-hitting trail bike that's designed to handle 29x2.8" rubber inside its 425mm chainstays.
The four-bar suspension is said to be "super progressive with a real steep leverage ratio. It effectively pops back and returns the energy." As pictured the bike is setup with 140mm up front, and 130mm at rear. Production versions will likely use a longer stroke coil shock, providing 140mm in the rear.
The frame pivot hardware is from a 2010 Specialized Bighit, designed to be cheap and easy to source replacements. The steel frame construction is brass brazed and left untouched, showing Monē's impressive torch-wielding abilities.
22-year old Hayden Francis of HTech is changing what you may think of wooden bikes. Pictured is the Perth-based builder's first mountain bike frame. The frames are designed and tested using CAD and FEA (Finite element analysis).
Each frame is fully custom, made with locally sourced hardwood timbers. The joints are CNC-machined, and then hand finished prior to bonding.
Carbon fibre is used at the chainstays in order to fit the 27.5x3.0in Plus tire.
Not made of wood, Woods Bicycle Co is run by two brothers out of the coastal town of Byron Bay, New South Wales. They travelled to HBSA to show off this street/park smasher (the only one at the show) and a custom steel road bike.
The brass head badge is a work of art.
Curve Cycling has a new long-distance 29x3.0"-wheeled off-road bike packing machine, the Battlecat. Pictured is the titanium model, fitted with some seven bottle cage mounts, plus mounts for "everything" cages. Unlike many other bikes of this category, this one is purposely *not* suspension corrected and uses Curve's own rigid fork as a result. The anodised artwork on this pre-production prototype was also done by Nine Volt Colour.
Be proud, MTB bar widths are influencing the drop bar world, too. Curve's prototype handlebars will be available in 650, 600, 550mm widths (regular road handlebars are typically between 400-460mm). Due out in July, the bars will be named the "Walmer bars", after the Melbourne-based pedestrian bridge they barely fit through.
Another for going far. Made in Canberra, this Fikas titanium fat bike looks like it was built for a zombie apocalypse. It's built with Rohloff internal gear hubs, Gates belt drive and a Lauf Carbonara fork.
What I like most is that the down tube has been turned into a fluid canister, with a filling port up top, and a drain at the bottom. Its owner apparently uses it for stove fuel, but I can think of better things to fill it with.
Dave Rome is a tech editor at CyclingTips.com, Pinkbike's sister site. Find dropbar coverage of the Handmade Bicycle Show Australia over at CyclingTips.
137 Comments
Cool bike, crappy joints.
Pretty cool none the less
At the same time... "22-year old Hayden Francis of HTech is changing what you may think of wooden bikes....." When I was 22, definitely wasn't inlaying carbon into hand built, CNC'd jointed wood bike frames! give the kid a few years experience and see what he comes up with. Gotta start somewhere, this is one hell of a starting point
It seems these comments have got a bit out of control, normally I don't bother answering comments like this, but in this case I think it is best to do so.
First, thanks James you are all correct.
To Bikethrasher yes everybody can improve, and we are currently evaluating a new manufacturing technique that will allow us to produce tighter joints. However for a few reasons we will never be able to produce joints as your google search provided.
1. The the images you have found are mostly renders and the actual photos and joints made using various jigs on solid timber, compared to our thin walled tube are not possible.
2. Our CNC will not produce our complex tubes as usable parts straight out of the machine, and therefore need to be hand finished so they will fit in together.
3. As a woodworker you will know that epoxy is a very broad term for a range of adhesive and fillers. After extensive testing, we have decided on 6 different adhesives and variations to use for bonding different parts of our frames were they are best suited. The adhesive used in the IsoLoc is a thicker, but very flexible epoxy, that needs some adhesive to remain in the joint. As a tight joint that you are after will cause a dry or starved joint that is very dangerous. This has been told to us by the manufacturer and has been backed up by our own testing.
I hope this helps you understand the reasons for the larger than usual woodworking joint.
So while titanium 3D printing (SLS) doesn't require infill, I'm not sure I'd refer to the manual use of it as "genius"...
In all fairness, lattice structures are rarely used in MTB industry and honestly as dentist bikes are already breaking 10k price point, this is doomed to change. Looking at cutting edge industries and performance oriented products, carbon-alu-carbon sandwich seems to be the way to go for load bearing structures that want to utilize benefits of both materials. Before you know it there will be that one bling bling sub 100g XC handlebar made that way. And relative fragility of carbon frames can be easily addressed that way too - with lightweight lattice infill of metal.
Then of course there will be a 3-5 year period where none will sell because we shop with our eyeballs and they'll 'look funny', but we'll eventually come around.
I am the owner and rider of the wooden bike. I’m glad some of you appreciate the effort that Hayden put into the build.
So......just to be CLEAR -
I weigh 100 Kg (220lb). I have ridden the bike extensively, including the EWS course in Derby, Tasmania. It handles all terrain without issues. Of course it rides like a hard tail, because it is
It has and continues to perform perfectly. The ride feel is somewhere between Ti and Steel.
It’s a work of utterly functional art and should be appreciated as such.
Cheers
James
Cheers
m.pinkbike.com/forum/listcomments/?threadid=165425
Quite happy with the final weight. Compared to my previous frame/bike that I've ridden for almost 2 years (and is still going strong), most weight savings were in the component choice.
a 9 year old bike. Do they still make the Bighit?
Being able to ride in and hang the bikes up in the foyer was pretty sweet.
Only part that was a bit of a shame was there werent more vendors or brands there for if you want to build your own bike. Columbus tubing was there but that was about it. That to me would have been awesome to see.
Definitely worth a visit next time round though, some great works to see first hand.
But printed seat clamp, GTFOOH.... No way no how.
Seriously though, you have to automate some processes to create new and cool bikes.
It is in a ti bike, so if there were impurities and then you welded it, the rider would have a real bad day later.
Giant pain for welding set up and I would not hesitate to consume from it after you give it a cleaning. Don't know if anyone makes the right sort of bottle brush for that though.
Tires?
brake's disc?
Ball bearings?
*scoffs*
What's with the listicles on pinkbike? Fingers crossed pinkbike doesn't become a site where every title has a number in it.