Tomo Bikes

Blog

  • Custom Beach Race Handlebars

    For various reasons I ended up entered into the Battle on the Beach race this year. It gave me the opportunity to sort out a few issues on the fat bike – slacker head angle, straighten the rear end, a bunch of nice Hope Technology components and a lighter tyre/tube combination (that saved 880g per wheel:-).

    I had also wanted to build some bike packing bars that might also work for a minimum bit of aero on the 3 mile beach straight. I had an old set of narrow bars I had made so cut bits off and added bits on to create these:

  • Custom rack and frame mods

    For my entry into the recycle project, where we took old city bikes and gave them a refresh for a future useful life, I (obviously) did a bit of fabrication.

    I chose to do some frame changes, to make it look a little more unisex, add some branding, a custom rack and some paint in a hardwearing coating in BMW Mini Orange.

    Custom with ears
    Primered frame
    Brazed rack base
    Frame mods complete
    Rack base
    Brazing Frame mods
    It’s a win

  • Recycle project

    As well as new frame builds and repairs, it’s also great to be able to save things from going to scrap. I had the chance to rework a number of city bikes that had come to the end of use under a contract.

    It was especially nice to do this a number of other likeminded folks so I donated a few for others to make their mark and see what we all came up with. Big thanks to Dave from @Dave.bike, Marlon from @babyldn and Felix from @thebikefelix for being up for it.

    The party piece of these bikes is they are almost maintenance free with shaft drive, hub gears and drums brakes. I wanted to give mine a slightly more unisex look, tidy up a few ugly features and add some carrying capacity (and add some branding:-). This should become our family go to the shops bike.

  • Mini Velo (back catalog)

    This was a built a long time ago but still fun to get it out for a spin. I love the idea of Mini Velos as a bike that takes up less space still rides well. Great for shed space or fitting in a flat. This one has an old Dura Ace 8 speed set up (because that’s what I had) and I like the look of it!

    It has a mixture of Columbus tubes and some really tight geometry for sneaking through the traffic as I used to use it commuting. To be honest it would be helped by some wider tyres in town, given the condition of the roads but these ones make it pretty lively. It was originally built to take to a bike show and did a great job of steering people over to the stand.

  • Favourite build?

    At a recent event someone asked me what my favourite build was. That’s a difficult one to answer and probably changes over time or for different reasons but the one bellow is up there.

    I wanted to make one of these after seeing Paul Brodie produce a version of the Giraffe Bike on his excellent YouTube channel. Paul kept his pretty close to the original but I preferred to change the shape (length) slightly for a better fit and to ease traveling with it, I decided to make it foldable. It’s more Moulton than Brompton but it does make it appreciably smaller. I made this to show at the Brazin handmade bike show in Glasgow in 2024 and ended up finishing it on the day I travelled to Scotland so was completely untested. Can’t wait to take it on a proper tour.

  • Cyclist Film Festival

    What a great fun day with a visit to The Woods Cyclery, some tall bike demo rides before riding an untested route to Eastleigh for the film festival evening with Joel and Alex the producers of the Frankenbiking film. Local James came too which helped greatly with the navigation.

    The weather wasn’t that friendly and some of the off-road was pretty greasy. We had a decent amount of jeapody for a mini adventure, with some off-road dark downhilling, forrest bog trudge and closed road challenge.

    The organisers were kind enough to let us host a quick Q&A. We did have to clean our selves and the bikes to get them into the cinema though:)

    There’s 2 last shows in Piccadilly on Friday 7th and Westfield on Saturday the 8th for a really great programme of bike films. Checkout the Cyclistfilmfestival.co.uk website for the location and get tickets.

  • Frankenbiking @ Cyclist Film festival

    We were involved in the Award Winning Tall Bike film Frankenbiking last year since when it has won a number of awards. It is now included in the Cyclist Film Festival that is showing across the UK in Jan and Feb 2025 together with a great set of other independent and award winning films. The programme is over two hours long so if you want to see and support some independent bike films check their website for your nearest showing https://www.cyclistfilmfestival.co.uk

  • Custom racks

    Racks are one of the nice accessories to produce for a bike, as it creates a level of personalisation for the intended use of the rider. If it’s made bespoke for the frame it doesn’t need adjusters and can be honed down to a simple and effective form. We’ve done a few this way recently but this is the reason they cannot be mass produced. They do provide an extra special something as part of a bespoke build or give something old some extra sauce.

  • 3Rensho repaint

    Lewis has returned with a lovely old fluro green 3 Rensho frame. The paint was really faded and it needed a couple of repairs for a cracked seat tube and bridge. It was also in need of an appropriate fork so we decided to build a new one with unicrown straight legs. All covered in a fresh coat of green and the decals he had sourced.

  • Brazing 101 2025

    So 2025 started with a bit of brazing education for Sam in preparation for his new job. Good to learn a new skill and he picked it up real quick. Next time maybe some frame making too.

    It barely got above freezing on the day so we were both happy to huddle round the flame!