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