CUSTOM bikes
Curve Cycling
Founded in 2013 and based in Melbourne, Australia, Curve Cycling lives and breathes bicycles that are built to explore
CRISP TITANIUM
If you’re considering titanium as a material for your custom-made bicycle frame you are probably already aware of its superb qualities: ultra-light, responsive, low maintenance, resistance to corrosion, superlative ride characteristics. It almost sounds too good to be true, right? Not so. The way the big bike manufacturers pump out the “stock” frames leaves little left to the craft of custom frame building. Crisp Titanium does ONLY bicycle frames made-to-order for the 5-6% of cyclists who realise the value of a custom, handcrafted frame.
KUALIS CYCLES
Yoshi Nishikawa – Founder, Designer and Frame Builder at Kualis Cycles.
Architect turned frame builder, Yoshi honed his skills in as frame builder with Level Tokyo and Seven Cycles, Massachusettes USA specialising in titanium builds. Having spent 7 years at Seven Cycles, he honed his welding skills to eventually become the lead welder there. But the home calling proved too hard to resist and Yoshi soon left USA to go back to Wakayama City, near Osaka, Japan. And there he welded under his own name, Kualis Cycles by Yoshi Nishikawa.
MOOTS
Based out of Steamboat Springs, Colorado USA, MOOTS have been handcrafting bicycles frames since 1981, earning a reputation for building some ofmthe finest quality titanium road and cross frames on the market. Famous for the ‘stack of dimes’ welding technique, MOOTS offers a choice of road or cross/gravel frames in standard or custom geometry.
PASSONI
Passoni is dedicated to the passion of cycling. Based out of Milan, Passoni has a worldwide reputation for creating exceptional custom bicycle frames in carbon-fibre, steel and titanium, designed for those with a true appreciation of fine craftmanship. Having over 30 years of haute-framebuilding, each exquisitely finished frame echoes Luca Passoni’s attention to detail. Passoni is certainly not for everyone, the price you pay echoes the heritage, perfect welds and top-end build quality. The loyalty Passoni creates borders on obsession with the customers who commission a bike build from them. The hallmark ‘invisible welds’ is hugely expensive and time consuming. The process is still shrouded in secrecy. For example, it takes 40 hours to smoothen the weld joint on one titanium frame, so go figure.
PEGORETTI
Company founder Dario Pegoretti, first came to prominence while apprenticing with master Italian framebuilder Luigi Milani in the 1980s, building custom bicycle frames for the best professional racers in that decade. In 1990, Dario set out to build frames under his own name, developing a signature style that melded art, music and strikingly innovative techniques. Dario specialises in TIG-welded steel and stainless steel tubing and works exclusively with Columbus Italy, where many tube shapes are designed by Dario, and subsequently Columbus makes them for Pegoretti’s own use. Even Chris King designs the headset No. D11 specific for Pegoretti headset use. The carbon Falz2 fork is also designed by Pegoretti and used throughout the range of Pegoretti’s steel frames.
RICHARD SACHS
Richard Sachs is an American bicycle framebuilder based in New Haven, Connecticut since 1975. He builds road racing and cyclo-cross bicycles. His lug and fitting designs are employed by many other framebuilders. Richard Sachs is a one-man shop using traditional hand-building methods. He uses a custom-drawn Columbus steel tubing for the frameset and the all-steel fork. Each lug joint is hand-polished, brazed and each joint welded to perfection.
SAFFRON FRAMEWORKS
Richard Sachs is an American bicycle framebuilder based in New Haven, Connecticut since 1975. He builds road racing and cyclo-cross bicycles. His lug and fitting designs are employed by many other framebuilders. Richard Sachs is a one-man shop using traditional hand-building methods. He uses a custom-drawn Columbus steel tubing for the frameset and the all-steel fork. Each lug joint is hand-polished, brazed and each joint welded to perfection.
SPEEDVAGEN
To hone the design philosophy of SpeedVagen is to find the balnce between frame and rider. Look closely: every curve and line of the SpeedVagen frame is designed to look and work perfectly together. The headtube, for example, is shaped perfectly to pair with the lines of the Enve Composites fork, smoothly transitioning from frame to headset to fork crown. The tubing of the frame is robust at the front of the frame and is smaller toward the seatmast, to smooth out any roughness from the road that’s transmitted up to the saddle and the rider. The seatstays hug the wheel tapering flat and wide for a smooth ride and creating a beautiful curve-shaped silhouette from behind. Frame-to-component interfaces are mated with stainless steel reinforcement in high-wear areas—their curvatures smoothly blending between the tubes they attach. That’s what we call balance.
STELBEL
To hone the design philosophy of SpeedVagen is to find the balnce between frame and rider. Look closely: every curve and line of the SpeedVagen frame is designed to look and work perfectly together. The headtube, for example, is shaped perfectly to pair with the lines of the Enve Composites fork, smoothly transitioning from frame to headset to fork crown. The tubing of the frame is robust at the front of the frame and is smaller toward the seatmast, to smooth out any roughness from the road that’s transmitted up to the saddle and the rider. The seatstays hug the wheel tapering flat and wide for a smooth ride and creating a beautiful curve-shaped silhouette from behind. Frame-to-component interfaces are mated with stainless steel reinforcement in high-wear areas—their curvatures smoothly blending between the tubes they attach. That’s what we call balance.
