U.S. Built Custom Bicycles in Titanium and Titanium-Carbon Mix
U.S. Built Custom Bicycles in Titanium and Titanium-Carbon Mix
Duff’s were made in Haverhill, MA, just up the road from us. They are smaller than most mills of that vintage, and many of them went to hobbyists half-a-century ago. We like them because they’re more easily moved than their larger cousins, and they take up less floor space. Their distinctive green paint also livens up the shop a little. Our favorite Duff bores our titanium stem tails to perfect roundness.
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.
People who tour our factory almost always comment on the brute elegance of the lathes and mills we use to build our frames. It’s a hodge-podge of heavy equipment drawn from old brick buildings like ours all over New England. Many of these machines have been working at their daily tasks for more than 50 years.
Skip Brown, who builds all our specialized fixturing, also maintains our fleet of behemoths. He shows up with the sun each morning and makes his rounds, oiling, aligning and cleaning. Skip says he can smell a well-cared for machine, just from the freshness of the oil scent wafting above it.
