Seven Cycles – Page 101 – U.S. Built Custom Bicycles in Titanium and Titanium-Carbon Mix

Crossing Categories

In the beginning (1997) we were known as builders of custom road and mountain bikes, and certainly of the more than 25,000 frames we’ve turned out, many of them fit neatly into one of these two categories. But as we’ve gone along, we’ve expanded our line to include more models than any other custom builder. Today we build cyclocross race and adventure bikes, urban commuters, track bikes and tandems.

Another thing that has happened is that the basic constraints of traditional categories have broken down, so that today, even though we are still building traditional road and mountain bikes, a very high percentage of our work is on bikes that cross categories or even combine them. Cyclocross race bikes that convert to bad weather commuters are common. Road bikes that convert easily for touring. Monster cross machines.

What our riders are beginning to understand is that a custom bike can be designed to serve multiple purposes simply by incorporating some features not commonly available on production bikes. Often, when they are thinking of buying two bikes for two different aspects of their cycling life, we can build them just one.

Categorization can be a good way to understand a bike’s basic functionality, but it can also be a constraint, and when you’re in the business of building dream bikes, no one wants to be constrained. That’s why we do what we do.

Melinda’s 650C Axiom S

This is Melinda’s brand new 650c Axiom S. We built it in partnership with our friends at Podium Multisport in Atlanta. The challenge here was to find a good, balanced design and fit for Melinda, who is both diminutive in stature and aggressive in riding style. Working around a 650c wheel size, Podium gave us positionals to work from, and we came up with this bike, which seems to be just what Melinda was looking for…

She reports:

My first real ride didn’t occur until yesterday! We went about 53 miles, and I honestly didn’t know what to expect. Here is my first impression: All the the ‘hot spots’ where I felt uncomfortable on my other bike were nonexistant..The pinch at the ankles, tweak in the knee, hip; ache in the back, etc….all gone. It felt like I could be on the bike and actually relax my entire body. Like sitting in a “stressless” chair (if you know what those are).

From a power perspective, on my old bike I always felt that I couldn’t pull up on the pedal stroke efficiently and I was correct! I was missing about half my power in the stroke because I couldn’t get the pull. On this bike I felt like I could utilize muscles and power that I never had access to. Rather than feeling the crunch at mile 20 and hanging off the back and thinking I couldn’t possibly go another 30+miles, I stayed toward the front most of the time, was able to fly up the hills, and even had energy left over at the end of the ride. It was beyond anything that I could have imagined!

Needless to say, I am pleased! I felt the road but not all of the bad things that come from the road like uncomfortable bumps, etc. It absorbed those nicely. It was incredibly responsive and ZIPPY! There is no better term for it! I don’t think Alan is very happy though because I smoked him up the big hills and had to hold back to fetch his sorry ass at the end of the ride. Oh well, can’t please them all!

The Next Generation

Every year, for more than a decade now, Neil Mansfield – a very longtime friend of Seven –brings his metal working students from Assabet Valley Technical School for a day in our shop. At this point, Neil can usually conjure up stories about the start of Seven and his old friends here better than we can.

A group of about 20 13-15 year-olds joined us for a Q&A with shop manager Matt O’Keefe, lead welder Tim Delaney, head machinist Skip Brown, and our graphic designer Skunk who talked about the intersection between welding and art. We followed that with an extensive factory tour.

It’s always a joy for us to see young people getting excited and curious about what we do. Hearing Neil talk to his students about a possible future where you can have a job that allows you to work in a field creating something you love reminds us that we are doing something not everyone gets to do.

Titanium/Carbon Mixes – The Best of Both Worlds

If you were to take a carbon fiber tube and wrap it against the wall, then hold your ear to it, there would be little if any sound emanating from the tube. If you did the same test with metal, it would sing like a tuning fork. The same holds true for frames, metal sings and carbon whispers. These two qualities make for very different experiences on the road. Carbon bikes, like our Diamas line, make pitted and potholed roads feel like you are pedaling over wall to wall carpeting; smooth, with very little feedback. Metal bikes, like the Axiom, Resolute, Sola, and Mudhoney, on the other hand, provide constant feedback keeping you in tune with the surface of the road. Once we start customizing and manipulating tube sets, we can alter how compliant or how stout the frames will be, but the material dictates how the road’s vibrations will be relayed to the rider.

There is a gap between whispering and singing, and to some, that’s where the perfect bike resides. By adding carbon tubes to a titanium frame, or vice versa, we can fabricate a bike that hums, bridging the gap between the two materials.

The idea of a titanium frame paired with carbon seat stays for the intended purpose of soaking up road vibrations was a notion that Seven pioneered and first implemented with the Odonata back in 1997, and though there have been some updates and improvements the same basic model exists today, now known as the Elium SL.

The ride of a ti/carbon bike is so pleasant, that we offer them in road, cross, and mountain bike disciplines.

The Life Cycle – Abridged Version

Every few weeks a freight truck wends its way down our steep, angled driveway to drop off two or three of these long wooden boxes. They contain raw titanium tubing in 18 foot lengths, all different gauges. The process of loading the unwieldy boxes onto a four-wheeler and moving them past the shipping department, through paint and into the machining area, one at a time, is something like a tugboat pushing a long cargo barge up the narrow, jagged length of the Mississippi River. It takes a strong sense of spatial relations and a fair amount of experience.

Wall of titanium tubing

The boxes get unpacked and the various tubes sorted by size into these vertical bays. This is our vault. This is our wine cellar. This is where the process of building a new bike begins, Matt O’Keefe standing here in front of the stock, a customer’s order in his hands, selecting the assortment of tubes that will go into their new bike.

We cut down the lengths to size, before butting each tube to give a very specific ride feel and handling characteristic. Then we miter the ends to fit together just so, tolerances hovering somewhere near the thickness of a human hair, the raw tubing shedding material in small increments, becoming a bike.

The modified tubes collect in small cardboard boxes, the frame builder working through a series of work cells, each with several mills or lathes in it, each set up for a very specific job, until the tubeset is complete. Then they get jigged up, so we can test the build against the frame drawing, refine any last details.

Eventually, you get one of these. There are, as you can imagine, some important intervening steps, but this is the abridged version of the story. Suffice it to say we weld, machine, finish, polish and decal, before we get to this point. Sometimes we paint.

What titanium doesn’t make it into the frame gets carefully collected in a barrel, building up over time into a strangely beautiful pile of titanium squiggles and spirals. The recycler comes by to pick these up and return them to the mill where the process starts all over, a closed loop of magic from which we extract custom bicycles.

The end..