U.S. Built Custom Bicycles in Titanium and Titanium-Carbon Mix
U.S. Built Custom Bicycles in Titanium and Titanium-Carbon Mix
If you fly over New England in an airplane, it looks like a patchwork of farm, forest and town, irregular and haphazard. Our roads are very much the same way. Stretches of smooth pavement are rare. Potholes, patches and gravelly shoulders more or less define the riding here. So when we’re designing a road bike, we often start there, at the road surface, and we think about what kind of a bike will work best.
An Axiom is a starting point, an idea that leads to other ideas.
Twenty-four years ago today, on January 7, 1997, four bike industry veterans launched the foolish idea of building custom bikes for everyone. The industry called us crazy – and worse.
More than 30,000 custom bikes later, we haven’t yet accomplished that goal, but we think we’re well on the way. We will make it so long as we keep listening, learning, riding, working with our hands, and innovating.
So much has changed over the years. Unfortunately, we rarely look back at how Seven has evolved. But even a quick sideways glance shows us that our first bikes have little in common with our latest designs.
Well, not everything has changed. Three of the original four founders are still “leading” the company. In fact, seven of the first ten full-time employees still work with Seven. Sometimes it feels more like a family than a business.
When asked about the anniversary, Seven’s first founder, Rob Vandermark, looked up from his latest pile of prototype parts and sketches and said, “What? Who’s anniversary?”
Regardless of Rob’s confusion, we’ve had an unbelievable journey so far. We might share some of the less embarrassing memories throughout this season. For better or worse, we’re still crazy after all these years because we’re pretty certain we’ll accomplish our original goal within the next 24.
Stay tuned.
Your Seveneers
This lathe, built in 1942, came from a local trade school who were upgrading their equipment. We use it to repair parts for the other machines on the shop floor as well as to build fixtures that will be used to streamline the production process.
Painted frames get prepped, then hung on the rack just outside the odd looking, seemingly out of place, paint booth. Its silver walls look like nothing else in the building. A sign hangs above the door that reads “time machine.”
Continue reading “On Framebuilding: Part Four – Paint”
Final machining completes the frame, making it ready to assemble into a fully functioning bike. The head tube, ever so slightly distorted from the heat of the welding torch, is faced and reamed on a vintage, Massachusetts-made lathe.
The bottom bracket, still just a thick walled tube at this point, is threaded and machined in the CNC, the largest machine in the building. Seat tube notches get cut, and carbon fiber tubes are fitted into the frame if we are building a titanium/carbon model.
Continue reading “On Framebuilding: Part Three – Final Machining and Finishing”