Neutraface Text Bold by House Industries from the Neutraface Collection. Although better known for his residential buildings, Richard Neutra’s commercial projects nevertheless resonate the same holistic ecology—unity with the surrounding landscape and uncompromising...

i look for something that - i hope - finds me All This By Hand .

All makers will have a similar story. This is mine. No matter what I pick up. No matter which tube, what frame joint I’m assembling, or component I’m working on. Regardless of how far into the three days I am. On every bicycle I’ve ever made. When, and it’s always a...

I don’t move the metal. The metal moves me. Joe Pugliese Photography .

Keeping things tight is part of the task. Around here that includes the seat post. After decades at the bench, and having tried countless brands and designs, this RS part became a reality in 2016. My desire was to produce a seat lug bolt assembly whose quality and...

some rides harder than others some rides longer than others all rides better than no rides All This By Hand .

you want advice? to be mentored? a chance to get one toe into the trade? read this. reread this. then comprehend it. and then practice it. All This By Hand .

In my 70th year I finally get the age thing. I haven’t accepted it yet, but the concept is beginning to make sense. What happened, and where did the time go? Please, don’t answer. Riding a bicycle and being around them for so long has pushed so many truths into the...

I launched this today. 100 minutes on my private circuit in the park that serves as a cemetery while looking mostly like a cemetery unless I’m in the area with no tombstones. That loop is 80 seconds at most and flat enough that two cog combinations are plenty. There...

One season ends another season begins. An imperfect moment to peel back the layers and find out what’s inside. (Until now) there have been too many constructs keeping me safe, and from seeing more than my own reflections. I’ve often mentioned the time between the...

It took nearly three years before the concept became real, for the stylized RS logo (see the original late 1970s paper cut in the second image) to be on my bicycles. Here is the original board that went to the print shop. The two iterations that are pasted down are...

Pride comes in many ways. Here’s an image of @yikaihuang. It’s a frame he’s made from materials I sell to framebuilders worldwide. This unit is assembled from Über Oversize tubing designed by me and @officinadariopegoretti along with my Sax Max lugs, bottom bracket...

I’m riding again. And when I leave the driveway it’s with a plan. This amount of time. That loop. Normally I stick to the plan. I’m a pedaler. Cadence is everything to me. Almost in an Old School way. Like when we used to spend winters on a fixed gear. For those...

Gabrielle Chanel, the company’s founder, once designed a Baccarat crystal plate that depicted the tools of her trade, along with an epigraph summarizing her art. “With these scissors”, an inscription on the plate read, “I cut away everything that was superfluous in...

A Nervex Ref 32 lug. This time, for the top tube/head tube confluence. I routinely wax on with flowery verbiage about these, so much so that I may have exhausted my adjective batch leaving my subjectivity suspect. But I’ll try. These parts, produced through maybe 1976...

Apotheosis. It happens rarely. When it does, I know it. More aptly, I feel it. In all my years standing next to a bench I’ve felt it fewer than ten times. But when a frame goes together superbly well, with all boxes checked (design, construction, craftwork, finish), I...

I spend a lot of time on things that never mature, myself among them according to my opinion. All This By Hand .

  “Essentially, fetishism is the attribution of inherent value, or powers, to an object.” All This By Hand .

Richie-Issimo seat lug sample circa (that’s Latin, by the way…) 2001. It took months of introspection, file strokes, fits and starts, and rearranging my vision before I signed off on this. The curves, the valleys, the points, the scale of the window decoration (not...

A rare peek into the fork department. Forks are overlooked now and have been for a spell. I’m used to this. I accept it. People willingly give others the work they themselves once did. Where does my front wheel go? Dunno. How will the front wheel be held in my frame?...

This is the original Nuovo Richie seat lug hand-made in 2005. Part of a set of three designs sent to Taiwan accompanied with the words, “make it look like this.” The N.R. series was my fifth casting project in almost as many years. The trade was still living on the...

What lovely is. I just finished a ride. Maybe fifty five minutes max. In my jeans and a hoodie and my sneakers. There’s this cemetery that doubles as a park masquerading as a cemetery. It’s two streets from home. After I quit racing or caring much about what I looked...

who here geeks out on new old stock hand files in all sizes and shapes but especially 4” to 8” lengths and mostly needle barrette riffler warding styles? today i found the aladdin’s cave of dead stock atmo. All This By Hand .

Several Presidential administrations ago when I was an 18 year old in Southeast London working at Witcomb Lightweight Cycles, one of the first hands-on tasks I was shown, and allowed to do, was lug preparation for the staff framebuiders. Profiling a lug was the term...

Cycling is a language. It takes practice to be fluent. The ride and the rider speak to each other. But when you don’t use a bicycle, it’s all so easy to forget. Today I rode for the first time in three months. Three hours. Some of the sounds I heard were familiar....

Nearly every commission I filled during my first two decades at the bench was for the trade rather than for a retail client. I started commercial life as a maker for shops I had agreements with and they, in turn, took orders on my behalf. I’d get forms telling me what...

This is a stationary bicycle. It keeps the studio from blowing away. Ha. I last rolled this unit forward at DCCX in October. Since then I move it when the leaves pile up. I've used it for some Post Office runs. Maybe six miles over three months. I knew November and...

To shape something, to create a series of radii, and half-rounds, and edges, and tapers, and dimensions that transition from six zip-codes through four time zones and at least as many arrondissements, you need a sense. It’s about knowing what came before. It’s about...

Because there's this recurring situation in which I explain what I do and can't articulate enough for the underexperienced or the lay person and find myself drifting into the abstract, knowing full well what I'm talking about while also knowing full well that the...

Ya to be clear, I've said a lot of things and opined regularly since 1997. Before that I never said boo to anyone about anything. But that's another story according to my opinion. Thing is, I'd take none of it back. In some instances, I wish I’d waited longer to say...

here's a scan of notebook one page one - i found two of these because iirc i started it over when i realized composition books would last longer than spiral bound pads. at some point i must have transcribed all of it over. the notes show the specs of the first-ever RS...

There’s this moment I fixate on. The apprentices are scurrying around trying to prove their worth. Showing they’ve paid attention. One of them might be next. One of them will be next. The camera pans back and we see more. The voiceover, courtesy of José Ferrer,...

Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with lugs. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, Lt. Sinyard? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for Nervex, and you curse the silver brazers. You have that...

because without this it’s a unicycle™ All This By Hand .

When I do these slots I lay some removable drywall tape in place and start wailing away with the hacksaw. Well. Maybe it's one stroke at a time. So it’s not really wailing. To do the opposing side of the crown, I take the same piece of tape and invert it so that I'm...

notes to self circa 1971 All This By Hand .