Saturday, June 17, 2017

Visit to Bruce Gordon cycles

Here's where Bruce Gordon has been building bicycle frames, forks, stems, racks, toe clips......many things and all done at the highest level of quality ever seen in the craft.
 This is the lunch table supported by a number of old dead frames-a number of them are Bridgestones....very popular with old MTB enthusiasts but prone to breaking. They make for a pretty interesting and solid table.
 Here's one view of the shop space with a large work table and some of the tooling.
 Here are some of the machines, a vertical and horizontal mill , along with the fork jig.
 The two Schnozola frames that Bruce powdercoated. I drove up to Petaluma to pick these up along with some of the build parts that Bruce ordered for the two bikes.
 Upstairs frame storage. I thought that I had a lot of bikes and frames in my shop- Bruce's collection dwarfs my 30+ years of accumulation.
 One of Bruce's many distinctive awards. This is the fabled " Golden toilet seat" from Interbike about 20-odd years ago. You had to be someone special to get one of these.
 Here's the man in his office getting the invoicing in order .
 Bruce has every bike that he built for himself since the very beginning and he has them on display in the upstairs showroom. Some of these bikes were ones that he rode and some were special projects for the bike shows. They are all of them distinctive and stylish without being overly ornate.
 Here's Bruce's very first frame built in 1974. This one looks like it got ridden a ton. I can't say that about my first frame as it was not that much fun to ride.
 Here's some of the collection with each bike and frame with a card stating the year of manufatcure.
 Here are more of the displayed bikes from the personal collection.
 Here's one in my size.....if only I had the $ 7,800 for it. There are a lot of carbon bikes from China that cost more than this. The workmanship is evident in the fork and stem as well as the frame. It is breathtakingly  beautiful. Very few people on the planet have created bikes like this and none that have this aesthetic harmony, at least to my view.
Most people do not know this but Bruce has two victories in bowling tournaments as these trophies attest to. Man of many talents !

1 comment:

bikenerd said...

Bruce's upstairs museum makes NAHBS look like the bike department at Walmart.