ARTICLES, PRESS RELEASES & REVIEWS
Simple Living
In the small, riverside town of Chester, Connecticut, a man named Richard Sachs works alone, as he has since 1975, making bicycle frames the way they used to be made — by hand — joining the steel tubes with little metal sleeves called lugs, then brazing the joints. If...
Interview with Richard Sachs: :The Rivendell Reader
Richard Sachs is one of the four most famous framebuilders in the country, because he's been building frames for 30 years, is really good at it, and he's been the subject of at least 20 newspaper and magazine articles over the years. Although he has built track,...
Sponsor Profile: Richard Sachs
From a distance you might get the wrong impression of Richard Sachs and his bicycle company. If your only interaction with Sachs is seeing his team van at Northeast cyclo-cross races you might think he was a big builder trying to raise his profile in the 'cross world....
Putting a Name on Quality
If you haven't bicycled since you were small, Richard Sachs's bike shop on North Main Street in Chester demands a mental rearrangement of what you thought you knew about bicycles. Forget the Big Wheel you got for your fifth birthday to hot rod around the driveway....
Missive
After my interview with Sachs in his workshop in Connecticut, he casually asked me if I'd like to take his bike for a quick ride. Despite the fact that I had on sneakers and that the bike was a little short for me, I jumped at the chance to try it out. I'm going to...
Interview with Richard Sachs: :The Bicycle Trader
I saw my first Richard Sachs cycle several years ago at a local century ride. It was early morning, when the air is still cool, and people were meandering around saying their hi's and getting in last minute pit stops. It was leaning against a fence, red paint...
Further Thoughts on Lugs
Any comments regarding the use of lugs must take in to account the primary task at hand—to join two steel tubes to each other. Deciding which method to employ involves either economics or emotion. Sometimes both. But rarely. There are those who embrace the process of...
Road Kings
A select few bicycle builders across the united states are hand-crafting the ultimate human-powered vehicles Like most serious cyclists, Dave Genest rides nearly every day, and even races on weekends at master's level competitions around the eastern United States. On...
Period Correct
The term, “Period Correct”, is one I’d never used in a sentence four years ago. That’s about the time I became the current owner of this 1971 “Made in Italy” Masi Gran Criterium. I took it on trade against an invoice due me for a frame I constructed for a client. It...
Period Correct
The term, "Period Correct", is one I'd never used in a sentence four years ago. That's about the time I became the current owner of this 1971 "Made in Italy" Masi Gran Criterium. I took it on trade against an invoice due me for a frame I constructed for a client. It...
The Heart of a Frame
I can remember the details as though this happened yesterday, but it was more like twenty-five years ago. I purchased my first ten speed bicycle—an Atala. Though the dealer had assembled it, the packing carton was still in evidence in the work area. On its side, the...
Weekends
Richard Sachs builds bicycles in Chester center. He works alone. In the brochure on the desk it reads, "At Richard Sachs Cycles, I am the work force." People wait a while and part with sizeable amounts of money for a Richard Sachs cycle. That's a story for the...
Big Wheel
CHESTER—Success is instinctive when you work in a town where acceptance doesn't count on price, says Richard Sachs. "I knew all my life that I would make bikes like I am now," Sachs said Thursday. Through the course of his 25-year career, Sachs has built top quality...
Framed Art
THE BUILDER To Connecticut's Richard Sachs a bicycle has a split personality. As a builder, he identifies an art form in the construction of a frame. But as a racer, he knows that a finely made bicycle means very little in the midst of competition. "I could make a...
Made to Measure
A custom, hand-built, made-to-measure bicycle ranks with things like first-class airplane seating and hand-tailored suits. If you've ever experienced such luxuries, it might be hard to comprehend what separates them from the mundane. But once you try the good stuff,...
Carrying the Torch
Richard Sachs Cycles is not about business and annual revenues. It's about fitting a rider to the highest quality bicycle. Working from his Connecticut shop, Richard Sachs has been building frames for over 20 years. After apprenticing with Witcomb Cycles in England,...
Part of the Job
Hand labor is so expensive that most products are designed to minimize it. Either that or their manufacture is farmed out to non-industrialized countries where labor is still cheap. Artisans such as Richard Sachs actually like working with their hands, and their...
Chester Resident Captured by the Beauty of the Bike.
Creating a bicycle frame is not just a job for Richard Sachs. It's a labor of love. "You don't look at it as just a bicycle. You look at it as a well-made product, like a fly rod or a well-strung instrument," Sachs said. Sachs works alone on Main Street and oversees...
Meet the Maker
Richard Sachs lives in Chester, Connecticut. He has been building bicycle frames under his own name since 1975. He started his business, Richard Sachs Cycles, following several years of framebuilding with both Witcomb Lightweight Cycles of London, England and Witcomb...
Local Artisan Creates Top Bikes
Some people like the finest in restaurants and others the finest in jewelry. For them, there is Tavern on the Green and Rolex. And then there are others who like the finest in bicycles. For them, there is Richard Sachs—a craftsman builder of lightweight bicycle...
Building a Better Bicycle
In the late 1970s, Richard Sachs was making about 140 lightweight bicycle frames a year. This year he will make 80-90. To most businesspeople, such figures would be the sign of hard times. But to Sachs, they are a sign of progress on his journey to perfection. Sachs,...
Richard Sachs, Bicycle Builder
On one side of the small basement shop on Main Street there lies short pieces of steel tubing. On the other side, shiney new two-wheeled racing machines. In the middle are a lathe, torch, and other tools of master craftsman Richard Sachs. Using a technique called...
The Art of the Framebuilder
You might think that Richard Sachs is a selfish man. If he were a rock star—and he certainly could look the part, considering the thin gold earring that dangles from his left ear, the close cropped hair, the sunken features, and his large, intense grey-blue eyes—he...
Conversations
Bike magazines and riders rave about your handmade frames. What's the difference between yours and one off the rack? I always go back to the fact that it's made by hand and it's made by me. A handmade anything is usually better than the equivalent made by a line of...
Cycling Towards Perfection
A damaged orange bicycle frame sits in the corner of Richard Sachs' shop in Chester. Stripped of its wheels, handlebars, pedals and saddle what was once a proud new bike is now a confusing mass of orange tubes, twisted together like a giant Krazy Straw. The frame...
Riding High
Any bicycle that costs $1900 might be expected to pedal itself. The bikes made by Richard Sachs in his shop on Main Street in Chester Start at $1900 and he will be the first one to tell you that they won't make you go any faster. No faster, that is, than you might go...
The Joy of Sachs
Richard Sachs will ask the requisite questions, do the perfunctory measuring, and generally play-act the tailor-with-a-tape-measure shtick. But the truth be known, he doesn't need any of it. He could size you up, take your order, and ship you out of his garage door...
A Stickler for the Perfect Bicycle
CHESTER—The façade of Richard Sachs' workplace on Spring Street is unremarkable. What's going on inside is not. In a small grey garage tucked away from the center, Sachs toils everyday building bicycles. Not just any bicycles. Contenders in the Olympics have purchased...
Bicycle Racer makes hobby a career
When Richard Sachs graduated from a New Jersey high school in the early 1970s, his love of bicycle racing propelled him to a small shop in England where he did odd jobs for eight months just to learn the craft of bicycle building. While on the job a Witcomb Cycles, a...
Perfection From Racing
Connecticut craftsman Richard Sachs is a racer/framebuilder who, like an artist, lets his work speak for itself. Amid antique shops, country art galleries, and whitewashed New England clapboard houses that all seem to sit on their own little hills in Chester,...
Handcrafting the Perfect Bicycle Frame
When Richard Sachs was 17, he was none too pleased when his mother refused to buy him a car. While his friends were cruising around in their Mustangs and MGs, he had to settle for a bicycle. But today, at 31, Sachs looks at that parental strictness in a far different...
Turning Bicycle Building into an Art Form
Richard Sachs of Chester has a logical explanation of why he would rather build a bicycle than race one. "Some people like the equipment aspect of whatever recreational activity they're involved in," he said. Sachs, 31, started building racing bikes 11 years ago. He...