On a recent Sunday afternoon Core77 and video/photographer Ben Friedle visited the Made handmade bicycle show in Portland, Oregon. It’s a new exhibition, debuting as the long-running North American Handmade Bicycle Show (NAHBS) struggles to restart after a pandemic hiatus. Organized by PR firm Echos Communications, it has emerged fully-formed, bringing together a cross-section of craft bike builders, component and material vendors, and a sizeable chunk of Portland’s bicycling citizenry.
There was too much to fully consume on one pass, so included below is a selection of details and craftsmanship that piqued our interest. For a thorough documentation of the bikes on display visit BikePortland’s round-up of bikes and since you’re here why not take a dive into our ongoing coverage of bicycle design and our previous show visits:
Listen beautiful relax classics on our Youtube channel.
• NAHBS 2018 – Gallery (73 photos)
• Bike Cult 2014
• Bike Cult Builder Profiles 2013
• New Amsterdam Bicycle Show 2012
• Oregon Manifest 2011
• Bespoke: The Handbuilt Bicycle 2010
• NAHBS 2008
• Dutch Bike Show 2008
… and now on with the …
Made Bicycle Show 2023
Beyond Brazing
Masterful construction is the essence of handmade bicycles, most evident in a frame’s elegant joints. Now bike builders are applying their chops to engineering and fabricating more elaborate functional elements such as electric motor mounts, suspensions and highly-tuned frame structure.
Packing It In
A custom bike deserves custom kit and bag makers are filling the niche, so to speak, fitting bags into every nook. Some attachment techniques are quite aesthetic.
A Fitting Finish
When it comes to paint and finishing anything and everything goes: there are retro stylings, contemporary vibes, sophisticated masks and fades, technical coatings, and machined patterns — and that could just be on one bike! Well, almost…
Listen beautiful relax classics on our Youtube channel.
Keeping it Raw
The most tempting of finishes for anyone proud of their welding beads, or with a rat-rod mood board.
Angular Force
Round tubing, gently curved geometry, smooth fillets – much of the visual vocabulary of bikes is Bouba. Well, here comes Kiki.
Swiggity Swooty, Easy on Your Booty
Regardless of whether a bike’s design is intended to provide an easy-going ride, that is the visual implication of a swoopy hard-tail — bicycle design shorthand for fun.
Etc.
Snapshots of the scene: finely machined items on their own and in hard-sided cases, booths from sophisticated to simple, bikes by students of a frame building school, a high-end family bike, and a penny-farthing bicycle.
Photography: Ben Friedle, Outlier Solutions
Source: core77