North American Handmade Bicycle Show
Last weekend’s North American Handmade Bicycle Show (NAHBS) was a great success by all accounts. I’ve especially enjoyed the beautiful photos of John Watson (aka The Radavist) from the show. With his permission, I am reposting a few of them here.
J. P. Weigle’s bike (above) for the 2017 Concours de Machines in France was never intended as a show bike, and yet it won ‘Best Road Bike,’ ‘Best Lugged Frame’ and was the runner-up for ‘Best of Show.’
I think Peter can’t build a bike that isn’t beautiful, and even after hundreds of hard miles on two continents – not to mention very rushed Rinko-style disassembly – the bike still looked good enough to impress the judges. Congratulations, Peter!
Speaking of Rinko, Peter showed his ‘backup’ bike from the Concours in disassembled Rinko form. He reports that many visitors couldn’t figure out how a bike without couplers could become so small. I wish Natsuko could have given demonstrations of how to disassemble (and reassemble) the bike in less than 12 minutes.
Next door in what became known as ‘Rando Alley’ was Brian Chapman with his amazing and very different take on the ultimate randonneur bike. Where Peter’s Concours bike was all about function and classic aesthetics, Brian created a unique combination of black components with 1970s racer-style ‘drillium.’ True to form, it appears that he even hand-crafted custom cranks for this bike. A stunning machine!
A showpiece of a different kind was this Mosaic titanium bike – built to showcase Jpaks, a new brand of bikepacking bags. Titanium allroad bikes can be great fun, and I’d love to have a go on this one! I’ll ask Mosaic whether a Bicycle Quarterly test is on the cards.
Another bike I’d love to try is Chris Bishop’s ‘Item 4,’ a more affordable model with TIG-welded main triangle and fillet-brazed rear. Equipped with 700C x 38 mm tires, it’s a thoroughly modern road bike with a beautiful steel frame, available with rim or disc brakes. (I’d like a centerpull brake option, but that is difficult to do with a stock carbon fork.)
These are just a few of the interesting, beautiful or just plain crazy machines that were on show at NAHBS this year. Head over to www.theradavist.com for the full gallery, and then tell us in the comments which one is your favorite.
