Richard Sachs Cycles

[e-RICHIE]

Windows 2.0

My window sill maybe 1980. The Spring Street studio, my second in Chester. At the corner of Spring and Main. Not much more than 800 square feet with some storage in a loft around the east side of the building. I spent a decade in this space. It was kinda’ cool. Spring was a bit elevated as it poured into Main so my perch looking down on the village offered a lovely vista. I was directly across from Robbie’s Store, an original old fashioned candy store that sadly was sold off to a string of occupants, all of whom ran a food shop or café of some sort. It’s been The River Tavern for a while. They don’t offer egg creams, and the kids don’t congregate at the fountain after school or during the summer months. But they do serve a date pudding that takes forever to make, so you have to know you want it after your meal, and order it before the menus arrive. Or maybe you order it the month before. I forget. Well it used to be like that when we lived around the corner on North Main.

The sill – remember the sill – always had a quirky mix of tools, braze-ons, and figurines. Even though I didn’t have a walk-in trade, I wanted the space to look interesting and even inviting from the outside. The right mix of tchotchkes is all it takes to turn a pedestrian’s head or to make a car pause while the driver strains to make out what it is he’s looking at.

[e-RICHIE]

Being Boss

With the Piccoli Gioielli art files complete in 2009, I prepared myself for what’s next. Having brazed and filed more than 15,000 dropouts it was time to clone my vision and lighten my day to day labor load. The designs were deliberately a wee bit different that what I had been doing for decades. I’d taken the horizontal shape as far as I could. It would be verticals going forward.

I did myself a favor and had three distinct angles made because, really bro’ – that should cover the spectrum of frame geometries I’d be dealing with. And like any maker of craft would assume, there’s enough wiggle room in these mating parts to take care of the odd dimension that doesn’t play nicely with others as the intersections on that next bicycle tell you where they are going.

And then there are the outliers, those orders that require critical thinking, a trait that attests to why some of us are paid the big bucks. What does one do when the only two feet you have won’t stand firmly in the corner mapped out for them? You show all involved who’s boss and start bending some legs. It all works so well when the result looks like it’s what you had in mind all along.

[e-RICHIE]

Killing My Fantasy

In 1979 I went to Italy with pal Len Preheim (RIP) for a 20 day trip that centered around the Milan Show. While there we drove to every frame maker of renown. We had either invitations or letters of introduction for each brand. We went nowhere unannounced. It was a dialed itinerary.

For me, this was Ground Zero. I came up in an era when the Italians drove the bus. Their place in the trade’s pecking order had no equal. I spent almost a decade fantasizing about who these people were, what the men looked like, and how work was done on the shop floor.

The notion I had, that of a European version of me, but older, more experienced, and with the wisdom that comes from being in a self-sustaining culture was challenged from the first meeting. These were not people who viewed bicycle making as a craft or one of the decorative arts. I met none who could fathom making one frame at a time for one client.

The travel was enlightening. I returned to Italy often. I was looking for something that didn’t exist. And each time came back to my own space resolved to make it work. After that first trip, I brought together a shooter, a graphic designer, and played wordsmith. I spent a small fortune printing my first four color brochure telling anyone who was interested exactly who I was and what I did.

My many sojourns abroad pushed me to switch gears and look my job less as part of the creative process, less a part of the food chain that offered chichi bespoke luxury goods to the cognoscenti and the rich, and more a maker of things, of tools for the sport, and a supplier of well-designed machines for those seeking them.

[e-RICHIE]

Just Keep Walking

One of the day’s pleasures is taking my dog for a walk. That’s not walking the dog. The latter is about routine, getting him some exercise, and letting him pee. When we walk together, it’s a chance to get away from everything and let the steps lead us. Hardly a plan. No prescribed routes. And stopping to sniff or just sit down to catch a breath is fine. Sometimes encouraged. An hour or so for these indulgences is about normal.

My daily is filled with me and more me. Waking moments are consumed with what’s at the bench and how to tie a ribbon around it. In these digital times, the box is wider and deeper, and the ribbon much longer. It’s like a room you come into and realize there are no exit signs. Some punch holes through the walls and leave, often with a last declaration so all left inside know full well that they’re going. But they still peek through the window. Most do. I think they do.

Walking with Buddy – the aptly named Buddy – is a way for me to stand on tiptoes and have a look outside. There are other pleasures I take to remind myself to live a fuller life. Not many. But enough.

[e-RICHIE]

Could Be Us

I love this book. There are no words. From end to end it’s one page after another of images showing two renowned horologists in their natural environment. I bought my copy from Shellman’s in 2006. I keep it nearby and open it for inspiration. Watchmakers seem to have a deep connection to their trade and its history. I’d like to see that trait when I look around the room I work in. I don’t.

By nature, I’m a loner. I obsess. Details are important. I’m also a Jersey Boy so there’s a gang streak down my back, probably more from the influences of popular culture than anything real. But self-selected groups have an allure. Being locked in a room with your closest peers can be invigorating. And there doesn’t have to be a lock, or even a room.

There’s an assemblage of craftsmen who make up the Académie Horlogère des Créateurs Independents. That’s AHCI for the foreign word challenged. The AHCI formed in the early 1980s under a different name. Two makers with a concept tried to harness their creative and commercial interests and by the end of the decade there were eight members. Some thirty five years later there are still fewer than three dozen watchmakers in the the AHCI.

Often I’ll look out that window near my workbench and wonder about the decisions and judgments that keep the organization’s numbers low and its growth controlled. Then I’ll turn the pages and it becomes clear to me that these men are different and what they’ve achieved is the exception. And if I spend enough time staring at the pictures, I can almost see the faces of those who share the room with me.




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[e-RICHIE]

Finish Work

The painful part of what I do centers around finishing the task. The beginning is where the hope is. When nothing has gone wrong. It’s where I wanna be and never leave. A feeling this maker lives for. But no one can ride a concept, or a drawing, or would pay me for half a frame. So I have to get to that third day, the one when everything comes to a close. The day a commission is typically serial numbered and logged into the book.

When I’m near the end of a build, there’s this sense of dread. I’m obsessed with small things that over the 36 hours bothered me about the collaboration – meaning me, with the metal and heat. When things go well, I expect it. It’s why I practice. But it never fails that one dimension, one file stroke, one small effort to own the brazing rod – it never fails that something zags rather than zigs.

The end, those last several hours when all I can think about is nailing one shut so I can wake up to start another and bask in that aura of hope.

[e-RICHIE]

That Line

There is always someone ahead of you who’s seen more, done more, and is better at it. Whether all of this is true or not doesn’t matter. You have to believe that the line is at least one step more. Many steps if you’re humble. And self-aware.

We never really get to that place where it’s all licked. To the moment when we’re completely satisfied that we know it. We have to believe there’s a technique, more to the mix, another way of looking at what we do. And that some out there have reached that place. We all have that someone, or lists of someones. Even if they’re not real, they stand there in their masterful way, curl their index finger and lure you closer to the line.

And just when you’re almost there, the line moves.

[e-RICHIE]

On Making

I love this. It’s a board I mocked up in 2007. There was an article these three elements came from. In typical RS reading fashion, I opened to the page and grabbed the important parts of the story. Full disclosure – it was a trade show weekend and I got the idea to go to Staples, buy some X-Acto blades, a stainless rule, some foam core, and a can of Spray Mount and make myself a little display for my booth space table. You’re looking at it now.

2007 – that’s a decade ago. Roughly 35 years at the bench and I was still searching for something else, and not yet but almost ready to finally accept the random nature in bicycle frame making. The idea that I could lure everything into a desired state (my desire, that is…) was giving way to – well, to just giving up and being satisfied with what came.

And then there was this text about knitting, and the hand-madeness of it all. And the human touch, quirks, irregularities, peccadilloes, and all were not only accepted, they were often the heralded features of a finished piece. That’s gold, Jerry! Gold!

Ten years on and I’m more comfortable, finally comfortable in my own working skin. Each commission comes with a level of anxiety. A level of terror. You just never, ever know what it will be until it’s over.

[Peter Polack]

Full confession: I'm a guy, and I've crocheted afghans.

I taught myself in order to make an afghan for a dear friend. The first one was a "get the feel of it" thing before making the gift. The next one, I jumped off the deep end with a complicated design and me having no clue what the different stitches were.

Yeah, I can vouch for the "different tension and irregularity", and the mistakes you pray won't be seen. Even at a religious 2hrs/night it took almost 6 months. Those old lady knitters are hardcore, and I respect 'em.

[e-RICHIE]

From My Gene Pool

Galen Preheim (RIP) from Toga Bicycle Company opened a lot of doors for me. Toga, along with Lenny, Howie, and others on the staff, was my first dealer, selling Richard Sachs frames to the public as far back as 1975. There were some seasons that I’d fill forty orders alone for this Manhattan store when they were in Alphabet City. Lenny also helped create the first team and sponsorship program I had, and those were good years all around.

My alliance with Lenny put me in many conversations I normally wouldn’t know about. One example is a relationship he had with Alitta, a new clothing company in Soho created by Anita Greenberg. Or maybe it was Jacobson. I forget. Someone there had the concept to use the gritty city scene to brand the apparel. Alleyways. Rooftops. The urban landscape as a backdrop, rather than seamless paper, lights, and the typical studio accoutrements.

I had the good fortune to supply a bicycle to be used as a prop in one of Alitta’s print ads. This is 1985. I’d been in the trade thirteen years. They’d all been about learning, and racing, and selling. It was beyond exciting to tap into something wider than what had been part of my daily routine. This was a campaign that would reach the mainstream. And more eyeballs would land on a Richard Sachs bicycle.

[e-RICHIE]

Enhancements

Another look at what distracts me. These paper cuts were in the trove of RS archives that came home last month, much of which I hadn’t seen or touched in many years. Decades, in some cases. During the middle 1990s I got itchy for change and spent as much energy doodling as I did brazing. Kinda’. The RS logo, conceived in 1981 and then attached to the bicycles a bit more than a year later needed something. I was looking for it nights and weekends, and even during some days when I should have been filling orders.

The stylized marque was varsity team material right out of the gate. Unadulterated, I loved it. When applied to surfaces and over paint colors chosen by the client, the logo had various borders, scales, shadows, and reliefs added to it so that a single version would work with most everything. In 1982 I settled on the black RS trapped in a white triangle with a red and yellow halo around all of it. That version lasted until 1996 or so. Then the doodling began.

I wanted to deconstruct all of it so that only the logo was applied, and have no artsy devices cluttering it up. These here are some renderings, most variations on the same two or three themes. I couldn’t get to where I wanted, but eventually got close by Y2K. Little by little. One element removed at a time.

Nothing shown here made the light of day. Nor did piles of examples like them. But it was fun being distracted. The further I threw myself into trying to reinvent this aspect of my product, the less productive I became. The interest I took in the look of my bicycles, while there from the start, began to consume me after the first twenty years at the bench had passed. I was making fewer units than I was capable of, yet more satisfied than a maker has a right to be. It took a while, many years in fact, to realize that my life and interests away from the bench can enhance all that’s made when I stand at it.




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[e-RICHIE]

On The Road

I did a lot of racing on pavement. My first sanctioned event was in 1972. The Stowe Road Race. Before that, I had a steady diet of time trials in Burlington with GMBC. Every Tuesday we’d do the Cheesefactory Circuit. It was an eight mile loop and the series was my Baptism into riding as fast as I could, while trying to beat others. Doing this in a mass start event was another animal.

Those were different times. It was harder to figure out what to do in the middle of a bunch of guys each trying to get to the line first. It’s not as simple as training (I don’t even remember if we used that word) and then unleashing the fury. Racing is a mind game, made even more so when you consider team tactics. Even in the most local of races, there are folks combining with each other to capitalize on options. There’s no playbook that spells out how to deal with this, or fine tune your intuition so that your move trumps all others.

When you reach a level when fitness and savvy are in the toolbox, it’s wonderful. A gift. This, assuming you have the competitive gene to begin with. I’ve experienced very little that feels as good as having the race I wanted rather than the one left for me by others.

My last season on the road was 2001. This image is from the Killington Stage Race and I’m climbing Brandon Gap. I was having a good day. A good day.

[e-RICHIE]

On Sunset Boulevard

A Nervex Ref 32 bottom lug. From arguably the most elegant set of lugs ever made. I brazed up about a thousand of these until the middle 1980s until I finally succumbed to the IC era.

These parts were made in France up until the end of the Nixon era, and I’d buy parcels of 200 at a time from my source in Paris. They were manufactured on demand. Could be ordered with or without a window. Could be ordered with or without extensions welded on. Each of the three lugs was offered in four specific angles.

The 32s took a lot of labor to get from the as-delivered state to one as beautiful as shown here. For me, it was a good hour per side to remove the perimeter metal that didn’t fit my vision for the finished piece. Then thinning them down was almost as much time. But it was worth it. Just look at this picture. Study it.

No other lugs fit as well, were as versatile, or held heat better. They were perfect. And I don’t say that often about many things.

I spent a lot of time with the Nervex Ref 32 lugs and believe they are the Norma Desmond of our supply chain. “I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.”

[mainlyfats]

This thread is my favourite thing on the internet.

[e-RICHIE]

Derivatives

A Nervex Ref 32 lug. This time, for the top tube/head tube confluence.

See yesterday’s post for some flowery verbiage about these.

I’ve exhausted my adjective batch and my subjectivity has become suspect.

But I’ll try.

These parts, produced through maybe 1976 at the latest, were the apotheosis (I fucking LOVE that word) of the frame maker’s supply chain. I got hooked on these components and shapes early and repeated them often. Had the Nervex Ref 32 set never been born and subsequently make my radar when I went looking for something to grab me, to make me wet and sticky for this trade, I would have found some way for Goddard College to make that space for me that I gave up in 1973 after postponing my entrance for the final time.

These lugs are in my DNA. Everything I have done or fantasized about since my first sighting (not to mention finding the source for these so I could have them made to my specs for nearly a decade) – – everything I have done is a derivative of these. Some people order mashed potatoes. Some rearrange the mashed potato into sculpture. These lugs are my mashed potatoes.

[e-RICHIE]

Retooling

So in 1979 I spent a lot of money trying to bolster my then plummeting self-esteem because it appeared to me that the trade was tooling up to beat the band and every European maker of any size or stature had a lot of fancy, heavy, big tools all over their shop floors in whatever catalog I opened. All I had was a bunch of files, some hacksaw blades, and a nice bench vice. I was feeling small and inadequate. My therapy was shopping. And during a trip to Milano I ordered a few fancy, heavy, and big tools from Bike Machinery and Marchetti + Lange. One of these was this amazing braze-on mobile that held all the small bits in place. At 200 plus pounds I had to put casters on it so I could roll it over to my brazing station when needed.

The braze-on mobile got mothballed by 1985 and lived life as a coat rack ever since. A nice Italian coat rack, but a coat rack nonetheless.

Two weeks ago I looked at it and thought wtf I could spend some time, get creative, reverse engineer the pre-OS era specs and make this thing work for the PegoRichie tube sizes and brake cable stops I use in 2017. Et voilà – I’m actually quite pleased with myself and how this dusted off fixture came out for an encore appearance.

It’s working well, as am I. The same can’t be said for nearly every maker whose brochure was in the piles I kept so many years ago.

[e-RICHIE]

Smokin’

In 1999 Cigar Aficionado printed a near 3,200 word article about the custom bicycle and those who made them. Marc Wortman touched on the times saying, “These craftsmen are an endangered breed. The efficiency of modern production technology, the complexity of working with popular space-age materials such as carbon fiber and titanium, and the small compensation for their efforts have all but wiped out the traditional bicycle builder.” To my mind the decline began nearly a decade earlier.

Despite the small renaissance my niche is seeing, it’s without question not the the one I entered as a nineteen year old. There’s a minimum of training and an even bigger lack of focus. Few makers now have a sense of the trade’s history. It’s common to start a label with no experience at all. But somehow, bicycles are still being made by hand.

It’s no less a joy to be part of the landscape than it was forty five years ago. The personalities are different. The synergy between the sport and what we do in the studio has all but vaporized. And nobody makes forks anymore. But people continue to fill commissions for those who queue up.

There have been moments when I’ve called out the pretenders, tried to (and did) mentor some who showed potential, and even thought about giving the whole lot the Heimlich Maneuver. Things change. I can’t control that. Or fight it. Men and women are coming to the bench now with different motivations than I had then. And traditions continue.

[Rayburn Shaun]

Great post, as always. Where do you think the young ones will go? Evolve or devolve?

Thanks in advance,
Tom

[e-RICHIE]

The Smiths

Yes. I have been fixated on the Nervex Ref 32 lug set lately. I've called them my mashed-potato sculptures, as per those scenes in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. And that they remind of Norma Desmond since they are and were perfect yet the world around them changed and left them in its wake. Hey I'm not that nostalgic, but I do believe some things were once better than they are now. Alas.

When I first touched frame materials, most were seriously crude by today’s standards. The preparation and finish work were left for the maker. My predecessors and even some of my contemporaries were also metal-smiths, not simply joiners and assemblers as we've become. In a typical studio, working with the torch was left to the senior staff members, while the futzing of all the little fittings was carried out at the bench of those being groomed to become competent frame makers themselves. This is how we cut our teeth. The quality of even the finest components was so poor that, unless one developed the skill to reshape, file, re-fit — unless one had the hands and eyes to discern the right clearance and proper aesthetics—no piece would get far enough along in the process for the masters to be able to perform their magic.

This seat lug, elegant as it may be, already has over an hour in its transformation from an as-delivered part. I don't think people who make frames now understand the evolution of how things came to be. Many don't care. And most are making bicycles the way children play with Lego toys.

It's a different trade now. A smaller one. I'm glad I got to see it when it was big.

[e-RICHIE]

Here And Now

I’ve been back at the bench for four months now and am happier and more productive than in decades. The new studio is everything I dreamed of. And/but I sometimes have pangs of anxiety, or even feel guilty, that it’s taken so long to have what I feel is finally so right. This is workspace number five since 1975. The first was windowless barn, no insulation, and a coal stove. Then, the larger square space in the village. It had the bay window from which I could people watch all day. After that I went to the basement under Century 21. Nine North Main was my first not being a renter, and that place was my trophy room. Leaving Chester for Warwick, I decided that my past was just that and the environment I created there was “just” a place to work – no evidence anyplace of the path taken to get there. Just a large room with tools, benches, and some materials. And now I’m here in Deep River, a mile from where it all began.

The anxiety, and some of the guilt too, is rooted in that I love this chapter so much that I feel that all that’s come before it would feel shunned if I show too much enthusiasm for where I am today. But memories and places don’t have feelings. And this love for the present doesn’t diminish the many years it took to get here. All of them delivered me to this bench and the four walls, natural light, and cathedral ceiling that surround it. There’s this perverse wish that, now that it’s all so perfect, it could last forever.