Whilst I no longer race I often feel nostalgic for the feeling of the bikes I used to ride and race as an amateur in South Africa . This feeling was the start of this project; to build a bike as a present to myself with no compromises from my preferred material, steel.

Columbus’ Spirit HSS tubes with box section stays was the obvious choice as the unorthodox, oversized cross section lends itself to incredible stiffness. A tapered integrated head tube supports a Deda EDG fork – super light and with a 1.5″ bottom bearing for great steering feel. An oversized seatpost is pinched in place with a bolt integrated into the seat stays to keep the silhouette of the bike as clean as possible. As this bike is designed to be ridden hard I’ve used a breezer dropout with a replaceable hanger (I’m quite hard on my gears). Deda, and Campagnolo finish off the package and to keep the overall feel of the frame clean the brake cables run via the tube.

The paint design needed to be loud(ish), to match the modern design of the frame. I took inspiration from the work of my favourite tattoo artist Chaim Machlev of Dots To Lines. I really dig how he designs flow into a powerful yet ordered symmetry on those who don his artwork.  We kept the colour palette simple to let the design speak for itself.

I really love how this rides and it has now got me out on the road more often than I have in the past 5 1/2 years of building frames.

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