NAHBS: Lugs, Lights, Racks and Fenders

We came, we saw, we ate, we rode. I’m still recovering from our long weekend trek to Sacramento for the North American Handmade Bicycle Show. I’ll write more later, but here are photos to give you a taste of the “bicycle porn” that makes the show so popular. For the builders, the devil is in the details, but the result is heavenly.

Lugs All but abandoned in stock bikes, lugged bicycles live on in the handmade bike world, where their intricate designs are unmistakable handcrafted. There were plenty of lugged bikes this year, but not as broad a range as what I saw last year in Austin.

Della Santa has built classic steel bikes for 42 years, many years before Greg Lemond rode his bikes.

While there are always plenty of intricate lugs at NAHBS, I’ve never seen ones with tips that overlapped, like these from Vendetta.

This sweet little mixte had an extra lug for the dual top tube.

Lights As the naughty girl who doesn’t ride home until after dark, I love bikes with integrated lights (even though none of mine have them). Here are some bikes with lights that are part of the design, not an afterthought.

I love seeing built-in lights on city bikes. Who wants to stop riding just because the sun went down?

That’s a light built into that snowflake (a Cateye SL-LD100 to be exact)

These built-in rear lights remind me of chrome fenders of cars from the 1950s.

Racks What good is a city, touring or randonneur bike without a rack? If you can’t carry stuff, you might as well drive. One builder confided that building a rack is harder than building a frame. Too many curving parts and the jigs are sized for building frames, not racks.

The racks from Signal Cycles are clearly not an afterthought.

Nothing completes a city bike like an integrated rack, like this on from Hunter Cycles.

This rack from Shamrock Cycles featured multiple wooden inlays.

Fenders Fenders are what keeps me riding even in the rain. Like past years, there were many with shiny aluminum fenders similar to the ones Dick installed on Ginger, my touring bike, but there were also some fenders made of unique materials, like wood and rubber from inner tubes.

Victoria Cycles rolled out some slick wooden fenders.

As did Retrovelo, with an added flourish on this long tail.

But Ahearne gets the green award for recycling old tubes to fashion their snow bike’s fenders.

Just Plain Weird What can I say? NAHBS never ceases to surprise me.

I’ve seen many bamboo bikes before, but none with a bamboo kickstand.

Peacock Groove went from last year’s fun to this year’s scary with these wheels.

These beaded brake levers remind us that it’s the cable, not the lever that does the job.

Rock Lobster showcased their Faraday bike, a classy electric bike without the clunky styling of most e-bikes.

This tandem from Calfee puts the kid out front, so they feel like they’re the lead dog.

A professor from the University of Fraser Valley recreated “The Whippet” a 19th century design.

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