Blacklab Bikes

[Blacklabbikes]

After spending many years brazing together world championship winning speedway bikes for Hagon Motorcycles Dad moved the business and family out of London and set-up a company from home in the countryside. My earliest memory is the smell of cutting oil and castrol R. my childhood memories are heavy on machines, sparks, steel and fire. When I was 5 I sat on my Dad's knee and cut my teeth with the oxy-acetaline torch. The way he tells it I was able to weld by the time I was six. Over the next twenty years I worked in the family engineering firm when not studying, riding bikes or racing sailing boats.

As a small child I apparently got my first bicycle and immediately told my folks to remove the stabilisers. It turns out that riding two wheels is in the blood as I rode off round the yard. Mum recons walking and riding were learnt about the same time. I have no memory of not being able to ride and to this day prefer it to walking.
In terms of bicycle building, it snowed and I "needed" a snowbike. Runners welded to forks worked well for a day till the snow melted some, the blades bit through the snow to the road, gripped and bent. I still have the scars and i still love bikes.

The bug of pedalling my own creation had started to bite but a physics degree called and off to uni I went.

I was into juggling and uni-cycling and MTB at the time and MUni (mountain unicycle) was just becoming a thing. I thought it would be amusing to build an off-road unicycle and as a student, it was the only way I was going to be able to afford one. Jigs built, tube bent, torch-work and nickel plating left me with a great MUni. Within a week or so of posting to forums I had orders, within a week or two I was shipping batches to Germany and the USA. I still have prototype 1 that I rode in videos of the time and the 36 inch uni I rode for 24 hours at red bull.

So it was time to either commit to frame-building and building a brand or follow my other love, teaching. With the support of my amazing wife we packed everything up and moved up north where I trained as a teacher, swearing blind that I would carry building again soon.

Fast forward through many years of talking about it, many years of "soon" and I'm finally back at it. I have really missed the creative outlet and the feel of doing projects with a start and and ending. I'll never be where Richard Sachs is, with thousands of frames under my belt, but it'd be nice to make a few! There are other aspirations and dreams but I'm going to build things that interest me and we'll see where it goes.

[Matthew Strongin]

Great intro, Joe. By my count you owe us photos of motorcycles, unicycles, "snow bikes," and you juggling. Thanks for taking the time to post...I look forward to learning more.

[DCT]

Great intro, Joe. By my count you owe us photos of motorcycles, unicycles, "snow bikes," and you juggling. Thanks for taking the time to post...I look forward to learning more.

Matt is being greedy. Let's see some pictures of snow bikes!

[Blacklabbikes]

Unicycles, motorbikes and juggling I can do. I have no idea if any pictures of the snowbike have survived. It was a lot of fun though.

[Blacklabbikes]

Well, here's me riding one of my MUnis on some northshore "back in the day"
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Here's a better picture of the muni:
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Any my trials uni:
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And here is the first production muni from the design and prototype work I did for Kris Holm:
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I built all sorts of odd things including custom 36inch unicycles at that time.
The one I rode for 24hours off road is still in my garden.

That'll have to do for the moment, there's riding to do!

[Blacklabbikes]

One more.

One that dad built:
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[Blacklabbikes]

On design:
I have had this frame in my head for a decade. Twin chainstays and a curving seatstay-toptube. An homage to the frames of the early 1900s when there were a number of manufacturers trying to further triangulate the frame, (eg Humber had a duplex fork) and yet modernised with 44mm headtube, pf 30 bb so as to run an eccentric etc. A combination of form/function and of a particular generation's thinking about engineering.

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[Blacklabbikes]

Brazing philosophy is an oft-spoken topic.
For me, I prefer to fillet braze. Un-tethered by constraints of lugs, it is the tradition in which I learnt - the motorbike tradition of a stack of dimes. Unashamed of being bronze welding in truth.

There is much technique is the best lugwork that often goes unrecognised and for me it's a skill less practised.

There are opportunities for expression everywhere, some like a razor-sharp shoreline, some - like myself - prefer the most minuscule of fillets. Some leave the lug unworked or at full thickness. I prefer to taper the longer points of a lug down to a minimal thickness with the idea of relieving the stress raisers.

The bronze welding skills I learnt long ago are returning quickly, and the rest are coming along. It's not masterful but I'm pleased with the shorelines on today's efforts.

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Another day, another learning experience.

[Blacklabbikes]

Another one on the jig.

Street-going pseudo-Track bike, skinny vertical tubes, fat on the horizontal. SanRensho Kerin styling.

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[Blacklabbikes]

Details,

One of the thinks that I really enjoy about building frames is the opportunity to insert little details and things that please wherever you feel they're needed. When I hatched on the name for the renewed endeavor this detail sprang immediately to mind.

The bottom-bracket drain is not as fancy as many or as light and technically challenging. More important than all of those is that it makes me smile every time.

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[Blacklabbikes]

Another little thing done differently:

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[Blacklabbikes]

A Fixie for a friend.

This is the finished frame and fork from the jig pic above. It's going to be ridden on the street to the pub, to work, etc but needed to be fixed and minimal. No bottle bosses, no mounts.

With the brief I wanted to make something classic looking with modern touches;

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[Blacklabbikes]

Stainless headbadge:
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[Matthew Strongin]

Stainless headbadge:
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That’s pretty cool. Any more photos of the badge on bikes all painted up?

[Blacklabbikes]

That’s pretty cool. Any more photos of the badge on bikes all painted up?

Thanks!
I'm afraid I havn't sorry, at least none to hand. Not long back into the game.

[Matthew Strongin]

Thanks!
I'm afraid I havn't sorry, at least none to hand. Not long back into the game.

Then I hope you get to build a bunch more with it!

[Blacklabbikes]

Then I hope you get to build a bunch more with it!

Thanks - Me too

[Blacklabbikes]

bike.jpg

[progetto]

OK, I've got to ask. Talk to me about that through and through chainstay bridge.

[Blacklabbikes]

OK, I've got to ask. Talk to me about that through and through chainstay bridge.

It's 1/2inch 4130 pierced through both chainstays and brazed then smoothed off. Instead of reinforcing the stay and then adding a bridge I like the look of it and it's technically stronger and arguably better practice. I like doing chainstay-seatstay struts for disc frames like this too.

Dellasanta did one like this with 10 or so further tubes through the chainstays.