Maietta Cycles

[anthonymaietta]

It is with a clear conscience after discussions with my painting mentor, friend, and neighbor that I am excited to release the following statement:

[e-RICHIE]

nice ideer to diversify and create another revenue stream atmo.
will this take time away from the framebuilding or are you cutting back on the simonds gig?
ps love the use of the word eponymous there.

[anthonymaietta]

nice ideer to diversify and create another revenue stream atmo.
will this take time away from the framebuilding or are you cutting back on the simonds gig?
ps love the use of the word eponymous there.

While I am confident in my research of the demand being present, I will wait to see if it does materialize the way I see it. If it does, the reduction in dedicated time will most definitely be the latter over the former between your two (correct) stated options.

[GSmith]

Will you be taking repaints from individual bike owners or just raw frames from builders?

[anthonymaietta]

Will you be taking repaints from individual bike owners or just raw frames from builders?

I will only be accepting raw frames from OEM builders. Repaint requests (other than frames I painted) will be referred to Hot Tubes.

[anthonymaietta]

The truck with IF's, Zank's, Richard's, Spooky's and my stuff leaves MA next Tuesday morning and I'm up to my eyeballs in last minute details, but I made time the other night for Boston bicycle studio owner Joshua Kampa and photographer Eric Baumann to come out to my shop for a visit. Joshua has posted a trip report here.

I thank TT and RS for creating a spot (SO) for us to post "hey read this about ME" articles..."thank you".

[e-RICHIE]

I thank TT and RS for creating a spot (SO) for us to post "hey read this about ME" articles..."thank you".

qui aime bien, châtie bien atmo.

.....

[Dave Kirk]

It was good seeing you in Texas------- and nice work on your booth. It looked great.

I hope next time we can have a beer.

Stay well,

dave

[MarkC]

Tony,

Your paintwork is looking great. I'm a huge fan of single color or simple panels and the blue on FNL was superb. Your show bike was amazing in pics, must have been an absolute stunner in person. Curious how many 100s of hours that project consumed from your life?

Cheers,

Mark

[anthonymaietta]

Tony,

Your paintwork is looking great. I'm a huge fan of single color or simple panels and the blue on FNL was superb. Your show bike was amazing in pics, must have been an absolute stunner in person. Curious how many 100s of hours that project consumed from your life?

Cheers,

Mark

Mark,

Thank you for the nice words on the show bike. I said in the big NAHBS thread that bringing that bike to the show was a deliberate decision to bring something to show what "could be done" with my skill, but not what I intend to make on an "everyday" basis. It was on the idea of a concept car at an auto show. The other bike in my booth was a fairly straight up road travel bicycle that was more indicative of what I want to base my business on. My business travel for Simonds (my day job) dried up completely the first week of November, but prior to that I was on the road about a third of my life. I had many long days on the road driving from lumber mill to lumber mill in central Manitoba/Saskatchewan/Alberta/British Columbia and a lot of nights in random hotels x, y and z to think about my framebuilding. I remember back during one trip in August or September I got the idea stuck in my head that I wanted to use abalone in a frame to commemorate my 5th year of being in business. I started to do some research and it quickly became evident that figuring out how to bend abalone around a radius would prove to be way more difficult that I thought. During a lot of those lonely trips to western Canada I emailed and talked to abalone distributors about different species of shell, guitar luthiers and jewelers about trying to figure out how to accomplish what I was trying to do. During that time I was working with John Langdon to try and design a new version of my ambigram. The result was a medieval version that I think is pretty darn cool. I had seen some faux wood paint on cars, bikes, etc and researched how to accomplish that look. One day I thought of building up some bands to look like nodes on bamboo and then I had to figure out not only how to paint steel look like wood, but specifically bamboo. During a trip to Portland, Oregon for business I took a trip over to Aaron Hayes' house (of the closed Courage Bicycle) to buy his Anvil Brake Boss Jig. While I was there I saw some of his very cool proprietary dropouts and bought a pair to use for the frame. Along the way during the planning process I decided on using a Press Fit 30 bottom bracket (with "necessity being the mother of invetion" leading me to designing a PressFit 30 reamer for my Park head tube reamer) and using the new Paragon head tube for the Chris King inSet headset. There was a lot of time planning and ordering aspects to that frame, so when I got to working on it in my shop it was actually very smooth. Tyler Evans referenced it in his SO thread, but I visualized the steps over and over again in my head (what else are you going to do in Swan River, Manitoba?!) I felt like I had made 50 of the same frame. The frame was divided up over a number of finite steps over the course of many months and the mental time I devoted to it was well into the hundreds of hours, but I really felt like I wouldn't have been doing anything else during that time. Its going to be a lot of fun to build a couple replicas for orders I have recently received, as I have learned a lot about how to deal with all of the different materials. The bike has accomplished the intended goal of getting more people to know who I am. I am confident that more people stopped at my booth and subsequently had a conversation with me because of that bike than if I had not done something of the ilk; knowing I have a greater chance at selling a frame if I have a chance to talk and interact with someone.

Sorry for rambling, but I hope that gives some insight!

Tony

[e-RICHIE]

SO

thanks for using the rich text atmo.
tony gets it.

[Don Walker]

Without going into too much of a rant here, I bought into the whole SRAM Press Fit 30 BB idea, because it seemed to have a tolerance advantage over the BB30 type BB's.
Well, needless to say, SRAM didn't go pro-active with a tool library for reaming/facing post fabrication and many of us had been at a loss for their lack of foresight.

One guy stood up and said "I'm mad as hell and I'm going to make my own tools!"

That man was Tony Maietta.

I ordered mine at NAHBS Austin and in the meantime, Tony let me borrow the prototype. Cut like butter and the cups pressed in exactly like they should!

Thanks again for going proactive Tony, I am glad someone did so the PF30's can actually be utilized by us steel guys.

DW

[MarkC]

Tony,

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. You've set yourself a damn high standard with that bike.

Mark

[anthonymaietta]

Its my birthday and I feel OK for a little self-indulgent promotion here. A week after I got back from NAHBS I thought it would be a good idea to bring my 5th Anniversary show bike (the one with the abalone and faux bamboo) to my local bike shop, Gearworks Cyclery with blind ambition to have them display and sell it on their show room floor. March is obviously a very busy month for them with people bringing their bikes in for a spring tune-ups, and I thought the traffic seeing the bike would be great for me and the unique bike would be a good conversation piece for them. The timing could not have been more perfect as they were just putting the finishing touches on a brand new fitting studio in their shop and were excited to have my bicycle on prominent display. The complete bike is on their showroom floor, as seen in the pictures below, and is for sale with Gearworks receiving a piece to make it fair. While I wouldn't say they are a dealer for me, we are in talks about what a more in depth relationship would look like. They currently don't offer a true custom line in their shop and my space is only 6 miles away. I highly recommend Gearworks in Leominster, MA; their staff is knowledgeable and very friendly and the shop is consistently immaculate and well stocked. Check it out in person.

[e-RICHIE]

While I wouldn't say they are a dealer for me, we are in talks about what a more in depth relationship would look like.

happy birthday atmo.
ps you work hard for your money so keep all of it.

[anthonymaietta]

happy birthday atmo.
ps you work hard for your money so keep all of it.

Trust me Bro...I ain't learning that lesson the hard way, but I would like to work with them in some manner.

[e-RICHIE]

Trust me Bro...I ain't learning that lesson the hard way, but I would like to work with them in some manner.

tell them to rename it maiettaworks and you'll be there 11am on tuesday atmo.
ps how come i don't see any team jerseys hanging up? with all the wins curley
got them the place should be wallpapered in national championship skinsuits...

[anthonymaietta]

Posted a cliche "back to the blog" entry on my company's blog. Applicable here:

Last night I finally felt like I was back in the groove post NAHBS. Its pretty amazing to think it took a month to do so, but I had to unpack from NAHBS and find a place for everything, I finished painting a client frame I built before NAHBS, I painted a stem, I built and painted a frame from scratch, I completed an S & S coupler retrofit on a ’91 Stumpjumper and did some contract painting for Cervelo. When you put the number of hours I do in the shop (what I can squeeze in!), cleaning up loose ends and completing random projects have a way of eating up a month. It feels great to have one frame in the shop that I will do from start to finish with nothing else interfering. With the number of dedicated machines I have there is no efficiency added in doing things in batches; for me batches are just extra clutter in the shop. I started working on Jason Pierce’s fixed gear road frame. Not to be confused with an urban “fixie”, this is a full-on road frame, but with horizontal dropouts. His frame will use Paragon dropouts that have horizontal openings, but with a derailleur hanger (and a bottle opener on the non-drive side, so it will have all the braze-ons for a geared road frame. The frame will also have S & S couplers. The front triangle came together perfectly with no issues. It was a very methodical bing-bang-boom and the time just melted away as I have some live Phish blaring in the background. After 5 pm I am essentially the last one left on the whole building campus, so I can make about as much noise as I want; and playing loud music is a true joy! The couplers are brazed in and all the front triangle braze-ons are installed too. I really like to keep the top tube, down tube, seat stays and chain stays all completely sealed and adding all the braze-ons before welding allows me to do so without inducing any additional stress in the frame and ensures no flux remnants are bouncing around in the tubes. The front triangle will be welded tomorrow night, and then its on to the rear triangle.

Accompanying Flickr Set

[progetto]

Hey Tony,
Your welding has always been neat but with your latest you seemed to have stepped up a little. Has there been any big break through or has it been a gradual progression? The beads look very flat and flow into each other nicely, can you run through the technique you are using.
Bill

[anthonymaietta]

Hey Tony,
Your welding has always been neat but with your latest you seemed to have stepped up a little. Has there been any big break through or has it been a gradual progression? The beads look very flat and flow into each other nicely, can you run through the technique you are using.
Bill

Bill,

Thank you for the nice words. It is a bit weird answering this question with the level of talent roaming these halls, but I do feel like the last month or so my welding has taken a slight up-tick in aesthetics. Overall it has been a gradual progression. I'd say my weekend with Carl Strong was a big up-tick back in October 2010, but it's always a small evolution. The desire for strong welds is a given, and I always felt confident my welds were strong; even when I was laying down toothpaste in the beginning. As I've said before the main "look" I'm going after with my raw welds is for them to eventually disappear under paint. I really don;t think filing welds is a good idea with mating tube wall thicknesses so thin. I'll do it from time to time to remove a high spot left by the end of a bead, but I don't go in there to do reconstructive surgery. When someone would ask me at NAHBS if my bikes were fillet brazed it would be the biggest compliment to my welding goal. The longer you weld the more you realize just how many variables there are; and every one of them has a part in helping you achieve or not achieve the end result. I've really started to feel comfortable with my machine. It's a baby 14lb DC only Miller without any applicable pulse settings; I think it really requires me to have good skill and I'm happy to climb it's learning curve. I'm of the mind set "if I can weld with this thing, I can weld with anything". Lately the shape of the cone I regrind into the tip of the tungsten and tube cleanliness preparation have really been on my radar; making those the best I can helps a lot. A little extra time cleaning a tube goes a long way in my book. Tight miters can never be underestimated; not only do they help keep the frame in better alignment during the fabrication process, but the welding is 5 times as easy. If I spend an extra 5 minutes getting a miter as perfect as I can it pays dividends ten times over. Over the past couple years I have tried a whole host of filler rods and diameters. I always seem to go back to 308 stainless on 0.035. I know its tiny, but it just seems to work perfect for me; it really allows me to control how much filler I want to add. The use of Pony clamps and two gloves on my right hand helps keep my hand cool and run beads anywhere from 90 to 120 degrees around a tube. Hold the TIG torch further back than you think; it will help you run longer beads. Running long beads you should be able to run a weld bead around the circumference of a simple joint (ref TT/HT) in under 2 minutes easy.

Its a cliche, but its really true, practice, practice, practice.

Tony