Dreams are funny, they end up in suprising places in the real life as well... Originally, about 9 months ago, I started to think that it would be nice to have a lasting farewell gift from Netherlands in form of a bike. Along the way I fell for a certain type of a bicycle, which one could characterize as "classic" trekker: speed mixed with utilitarian function and style. Lugged frame, steel, chrome, leather, the works. I am lucky enough to share a feel for style with my S.O., meaning a vintage spin on things do not take much convincing.
So, I (we) started to look for suitable bikes but were disappointed because such bikes were not readily available in the Dutch bike shops, and in fact not anywhere within our then budget/timeframe. It is actually peculiar that a nation of people living on bikes, go for very nondescript and casual bicycles wich are usually replaced within 3-5 yeras with the same type of bike after being rusted to bits. The whole phenomenom is actually worth a blog post of its own. Enough said that a Dutchman ridesa dutchie bike, which is black or if doing racing, a sporty model. 99.9% of the bikes are nothing out of the ordinary, ever.
As the 2nd hand market is non-existent I relied on the interwebs, where I found a lot interesting builders in the US where they seem to have a growing interest in oldschool bicycles (thanks hipsters and randonneurs), but they were constrained either by our size (S.O. would need around 18 inch frame) or time/budget. After abandoning that direction I went through a couple of local bike builders, who outright said that everything is possible, but it would be better and more sensible if you'd just go for the usual Koga-Miyata trekbikes like most people. Excellent advice for novices with our framework of use, but a complete polar opposite for what we had in mind style-wise.
I kept on searching for a frame that would be closer to our idea of a bike, and build the bikes around them. Should be simple no? For disclaimer purposes I was looking for a certain geometry (randonneur) and my S.O. was most interested on the, ahem, looks. After dredging numerous bike forums I found a couple of alternatives: Pashley, Mercian and Bob Jackson. All of them are renowned UK bicycle manufacturers with a bit different approach to what they deliver. Pashley has retro vintage line, Mercian has high-end and Bob Jackson just the frames. The Bob Jackson alone would warrant another blog post, suffice to say that they have seven different "off-the-peg" models with different geometries and a very generous scale of sizes. All frames are hand made in the UK in the old school tradition, which is rare and far between at this day and age. To sweeten the deal, each frame comes with a custom paintwork of your choosing (50 or so variations) and some additional modestly priced extra paintwork.
It didn't take long to fix on to Bob Jackson as it would accomodate both my dream for old school steel frame and S.O's dream for a stylish colour/style. Little did I know that the road from a frame to complete bike is both long and a rather expensive one.
I found a local Bicycle shop (Lola bikes & Coffee, the Hague) that already built refurbished old race bikes and showcased Cinelli and Pashley bikes. Based on their website they had a good feel, so I went there for casual chat and a rather good coffee and cake. The owner, Arthur, hooked me with Daniel, one of their technicians and we outlined our ideas, budget and what could be done. So far so good, this is possible! Daniel outlined the project and made a fitting of bikes together with the S.O. to get an idea what size/geometry would be suitable. With that information at hand, I contacted Bob Jackson, and got prompt reply suggesting an off-the peg World Tour frames for both of us. With the seemingly steep, yet at the same time, relatively reasonable price of 550£ per frame, the order was in for one 18.5 inch Pastel Green and one 23.5 inch British Racing Green World tour frame.
While the 2 month waiting for the frame was ongoing, we continued the planning on the individual parts which would realize the actual bikes in the future. During the wait our techie Daniel left Lola and Arthur took the drivers seat on the project oversight. Three months in after the initial commitment with Bob Jackson we had the frames in the shop and most parts on the way. To my surprise, getting certain parts, such as Shimano 105 groupset components, proved to be a pain in the *ss. When parts came, there were only one out of two, or the parts were wrong as was with the wheels. Dennis actually deided to build the wheels on the spots, rather than suffer another day of waiting. Additionally, as one of my friends told, it is probably cheaper to buy a stock bike with 90% of the desired parts, strip it, transfer the parts to the desired frame and sell the stock bike frame and excess parts. Thanks to Arthur we stayed in our budget and made some extempore changes to the parts based on availability and settled for a build date with Dennis.
The first day started with lying down the parts, spotting the holes in our planning and we were ready to start the builds. Dennis kindly offered his expertise and patiently explained everything he was doing on one bike, while me and S.O. fiddled with bike number 2. It's actually a very nice way of learning. There's time to ask, time to actually do practical stuff and time to document our journey towards a functioning machine.
Some parts were easy, such as the bottom bracket...
Whereas some parts seemed to defy the usual toolset capabilities, such as the headtubes, which could not be pressed in the usual fashion...
...hammertime....
A hint of grease....
Expert touch here and there...
...and the bicycles were done after two days and some 10 hours at the shop.Here, my Bob Jackson modeling alongside a local VW Beetle in matching decals.
And here is the S.O's Pastel Green leaning casually in our neighborhood...
Short spin around the town taught me that the bike is quite light (I'm sporting close to 100kg so everything is relative) and almost screams for speed. The bike is is comfy, responsive, and of course has the feeling of a "new car smell", if you know what I mean? Another observation during the build was that the two identical bikes on the paper have a completely different looks in real life. The frame size changes the look drastically as you can appreciate from the pictures of the finished builds. The paintwork, frame geometry and the accessories such as the fenders and saddles brought out a rather unique feel and soul for each bike. Mine is rather calm and composed, whereas the S.O's bike is full of summer sun and looks as if it's racing even while standing still.
Altogether an interesting experience, I may need to elaborate sometime with detailed parts list, budget, thoughts on the project management etc., but now I'm just content and happy to take the well deserved installation beer:)
Pictures:
1) Edited from:
http://museumvictoria.com.au/collections/items/769604/negative-warrnambool-victoria-circa-1910
Competitors of Warrnambool to Melbourne bicycle race circa 1910
2) -X) The build at Lola Bikes and Coffee