Tamarack Cycles

DC’s new Tamarack classic road frame is ready for paint. This one’s built with Tange Prestige Japan 7-4-7 superlight tubing, and a wonderful set of lugs and bottom bracket shell from Long Shen. Shift cables run through the down tube, and rear brake cable is inside the top tube. Double-taper seatstays fit into the seat lug’s cast spigots, giving a sleek fastback. The straight blade fork gives the frame a rakish look (as it were…) and has clearance for 700x30’s with Ultegra R8100 sidepulls. The rest of the build will be full Ultegra mechanical with some sweet RS500 wheels. Looking forward to laying some coats of paint on this beauty!


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A very interesting interview with Keith Noronha of Reynolds Tubing, with a discussion of the past of steel frames and a view towards future trends. I’m proud to use a lot of Reynolds tubing in my creations.

Keith Noronha on Reynolds’ 125-Year Journey to Becoming a Cycling Legend In this interview, Keith Noronha, Managing Director of Reynolds Tec...

Tony’s Tamarack Adventure Road frameset is back from the spraybooth. He’s chosen this subtle Porsche colour called “aventuringruen” or Adventure Green, which is quite fascinating, in some lights it is grey, in other lights it’s green, with a sweet gold metalflake. This frame is built with Reynolds 853 main tubes and Columbus rear triangle and tapered head tube, with a Columbus tapered fork painted to match. The polished stainless steel head lugs really pick out the front end. The Rodeo Labs sliding dropouts don’t have the inserts in place as the paint is pretty fresh, clearcoated yesterday. Designed to fit 700x35’s with full fenders, or 700x40’s without, this machine will be doing some high level adventuring in the coastal mountains of British Columbia, I can’t wait to see the exotic full build.

I usually don’t do resprays, but this one belongs to good friend and former co-worker Charles, who had this USA-built Lemond on an indoor trainer for a few winters and got some unsightly rust on a few places on the steel tubing. After stripping the True Temper steel to bare metal, and wet-sanding the carbon finish, I laid a few coats of classic DuPont Imron blue, applied some reproduction decals, and laid a few coats of PPG CeramiClear over top. Ready for another couple of decades!

DC’s new custom Tamarack road frame is taking shape. This one’s built with Tange Prestige Japan 7-4-7 tubing, and some lovely lugs and bottom bracket shell by Long Shen, in an attractive ornate pattern with stiffening spines. It’s been a while since I’ve built with this set, there’s no latitude for adjusting the angles on these lugs, fortunately DC’s geometry fit worked perfectly with the lug’s angles. He wanted to have the shift and brake cables routed internally, which came out nicely, I think. Now on to the rear triangle…

Always satisfying to stamp a serial number in the bottom bracket shell when a frame is finished - Tony’s adventure road frameset is ready for paint. This one’s designed around Rodeo Labs’ sliding dropouts and short chainstays, for tire clearances of 700x35 with fenders or 700x40 without; polished stainless head lugs are built around a Columbus tapered head tube, with an Alex Meade-designed lower lug and a matching Long Shen upper lug, so that the frame can fit a Columbus full carbon tapered fork. Tony wanted a fillet-brazed seat lug with a fastback seatstay, just ‘cause. Gonna look nice with the fillet-brazed fender bridge too. Triple bottle bosses give flexibility for packing big bottles or gear and there’s a third cage mount hiding under the down tube, and top tube gear bag bosses on top of the top tube, all with reinforcing diamonds for strength and durability on the thinwall Reynolds 853 tubing. This bike is built for major adventures in the coastal mountains of British Columbia!

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Some more progress on Tony’s new adventure-road Tamarack frameset. After completing the main triangle, I fillet-brazed a seatpost binder to the seat cluster. Next, I brazed the chainstays to the Rodeo Labs’ “Lockjaw 2” sliding UDH dropouts, then fitted the chainstays to the front triangle. Next, I added a subtle bend to the double-taper seatstays and brazed them to the frame, now it’s starting to look like a bike frame! After some clean-up, I cut and drilled the seatpost binder slot and sculpted the top of the seat tube. Tomorrow, brake bridges and braze-ons - almost finished!

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Tony’s new Tamarack adventure-road frameset is in construction. This is an interesting build: a tapered Columbus head tube will mate up with the Columbus Gravel tapered carbon fork, using stainless steel tapered lower head lug by Alex Meade and a matching stainless upper head lug for sloping top tube, both of which will be polished when the frame is finished. To fit the 35mm down tube to a 28.6 seat tube, I sculpted and brazed-in a step-down sleeve in the UOS bottom bracket shell to accept the 28.6 seat tube. The seat cluster is fillet-brazed at Tony’s request. The dropouts are by Rodeo Labs, sliders allowing the chainstay length to be altered to fit 35mm tires to 40mm tires, and fenders or not. Internal routing for rear hydraulic disc brake and 1x rear mechanical shifting through the down tube. This has been a challenging but fun build so far…

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An interesting article, kinda binds with my world view.

Carbon vs Steel — The Truth Nobody Wants to Admit Carbon vs Steel — The Truth Nobody Wants to Admit

Another new Tamarack custom frame, back from paint. This one is an all-roads/gravel disc brake, Reynolds 853 Pro Team frameset built to clear 650b x 48’s or 700c x 42 tires, the paint is DuPont Imron “Las Vegas Gold Metallic” with metallic black panels and crown. Built with silver brazed lugged construction, it features internal routing for the rear disc brake through the down tube, and wide clearances for big tires. This one is up for purchase. Designed with a 6-degree sloping top tube, it’s the equivalent of a 56cm level seat tube (actual seat tube is 51cm CTC) with a 54cm top tube - call it a “medium” in today’s language. Stack = 570, reach = 370, head angle 71.5, seat angle 73, full geometry deets available upon request. Interested? Contact me…