I’m a huge fan of Curtis Inglis and his Retrotec bikes. I love the way he does curvy tubed bikes and his seatstays are second to known. Curtis had a pair of really nice bikes at the 2015 North American Handmade Bicycle Show this past weekend. His fat bike below won the Best Mountain Bike category. The fat bike was actually built for Curtis himself. It was built to handle a 5″ tire with room for snow clearance. Curtis plans to ride the bike mostly on non-snowy days on the trails of Northern California.
Both bikes are built with a mix of True Temper, Nova house brand, and 4130 chromoly. Curtis hand selects the best tube for each application. He tends to use True Temper as much as possible. Take note of the seatstay yoke and the top of the fork. Curtis mimicked the two to try to tie the two ends of the bike together. The rack is a custom painted Pass and Stow model that fit quite well.
West Coast Powder out of San Fransisco did the powder coating on this frame. They do all of Curtis’ single color powder work. He calls them “a solid working-man’s powder”.
Curtis gave me some nicely detailed geometry numbers for this bike. The headtube angle is set at 69 degrees with a 72 degree seattube. The chainstays are 448mm with a 320mm bottom bracket height. The axle to crown of the fork is 450mm with 50mm of rake.
This 29+ rigid was built for a customer in Georgia. The drivetrain shown at the show won’t be its final layout. The owner plans to go with a Rohloff hub for trail riding.
The geo on this 29+ has a 69.5 degree headtube angle and 72 degree seattube angle. The chainstays are 457mm with a 310mm bottom bracket height. The axle to crown on the fork is 440mm with 50mm of rake. This frame was fillet brazed and features a tig welded segmented fork. You can again notice below that the seatstay yoke matches the segmented fork design.
Spectrum Powder Work in Colorado Springs, Colorado did paintwork on this bike. The customer worked with Ken Prosser of Kenji Design to come up with the design. The customer had a pretty specific idea of what the powder colors meant to him: “The blue,white, and green are from the flag, the red trim (headset / hubs) symbolizes the blood shed in the civil war in the mid 90s and from the ongoing Ebola epidemic that plagues Sierra Leone and west Africa.”
