Our favorite bikes & bits from Bespoked 2024

We took a last minute trip to the Bespoked show in Manchester. A show dedicated to hand built, custom bikes from independent frame builders.

Links Mentioned.
Sideways Bikes @sidewaysbikes
https://www.youtube.com/@sidewaysbikes
www.sideways.bike

Ryan Builds Wheels @RyanBuildsWheels
https://www.youtube.com/@RyanBuildsWheels

Atherton Bikes @AthertonRacing
https://www.athertonbikes.com/a130-frame.html

Reilly Bikes @reillycycleworks
https://www.reillycycleworks.com/

BSC Tools @bsctools5381
https://www.bicycleservicecentre.co.uk/

Bespoked Show @UKhandmadeBikeShow
https://www.bespoked.cc/

Victoria Baths @victoriabaths5466

Home

we’re down in Manchester for a very impromptu visit to the the spoke bple show let’s go and look at some full [Music] bites such a busy show so glad to see so many people there enthusiastic about the spoke bikes it was impossible to film in there really so I’m going to try and narrate over some of my favorite bits now as you can imagine loads of custom painted stems and handlebars and some really amazing paint jobs in there as well but there were some things in here that really really caught my eye and I’m really excited to tell you about I want to start with a small company called sideways run by a girl called Viola now she was the only one there that I saw actually hand building carbon bikes had a really really fascinating conversation with her she had two bikes on display there and they instantly caught my eye because they were immediately obvious that they were handmade you know there’s those little imperfections that you just AR still crafted but still noticeable as something handbuilt not built in a Factory and then we started to speak to her learn about her process about how she developed and actually learned from Brands like time and seeing how they’re compac in like carbon into molds and how she was developing molds through 3D printing and then how all the bonding works and the trial and error process that she’s been through was absolutely fascinating she’s got a YouTube channel I’m going to link it down in the description because there’s load of detailing there of her really closeup like actually making these carbon frames and the they weren’t that expensive like £3,000 for a completely customade handbuilt and the night nice thing is that you can get whatever geometry that you want on it as well so I loved her attention to detail when it came to the bottom bracket she uses bb386 Evo and you talk me through how whole process about how she’s got this um metal bar that is exactly 46 mm at a certain temperature and then she puts it the the carbon around it molds it and then puts it through a process of taking the temperature out out of that bar by freezing it and then extracting it so she’s left with a perfectly symmetrical perfectly concentric 46 millim to bore tubing around the frame that she’s making the attention to detail was massive and the quality that she was producing without you know the big Factory the auto claves and was really impressive just go and check her out I think this is um this is someone to watch after that we bumped into Ryan from Ryan builds wheels and he’s got a very fledgling YouTube channel as well that you should definitely go and check out all about will building he’s got a little company that um one sells Spokes and the other one builds Wheels On Demand uh he’s actually talking about how he’s splitting those companies out and he’s moving his premises and the wheel building to South Wales and leaving his business partner Pete to concentrate on the spokes um fantastic I love seeing businesses like this real cottage industries doing fantastic work really make progress he is now importing velocity rims now velocity rims have got much more of a following in the aax market the tour in where you really need to make sort of bespoke things that are easily repairable in the field but they also do some exciting stuff I was particularly excited about this aerrow Rim which I think is going to be fantastic for youth racing where you’re restricted on the the depth but also a lot of Youth Racers want to do a cycle across season and a road season on the sort of same rims they look fantastic and you get them in a whole range of colors as well so that an interesting Prospect as well as sort some Trail mountain biking as well so I think he’ll do quite well out of that um here’s what Ryan had to say velocity were kind enough to approach me a little while ago because I kept on ordering Rim from them and I really dig their R and you got a great reputation of building why well yeah so I thought that we give distribution little go and at the moment you can get anything at the moment you can get any Rim that you need from us we’re bringing them in like couple of boxes every month and shortly once I finished the move to South Wales then we’re going to be holding many of most and start into byself amazing offer and this is very geared at Turing classic Road bit of gravel some lightweight sort of new racing Hand by austr as well all these amazing colors it’s all there any color any RI any time I think you do really well good luck cool thanks right let’s talk about some titanium bikes and three brands really stood out for me craft Riley and Aon now what really stood out is the quality of the 3D printed titanium components that make up a frame so the rear dropouts the bottom bracket the triangles where the seat post and chain stays meat the head tube Etc all of that has just gone to another level absolutely beautiful and now I think if you put paint on some of these frames I don’t think you’d be able to tell the difference easily whether they were carbon fiber or not the molding and the smooth worlds has just reached an another level that I’ve never seen before interestingly that craft and and Riley still getting most of their stuff made out in the Far East where they’ve got good relationships with factories Etc and they’re doing a lot of the finishing work over in the UK so they add in anodizing and coloring um doing some final modifications so whether you want external lugs on the frame removing or left on for you know running external cables and how they do the headsets Etc facing the bottom brackets that’s all being sort of carefully quality controlled here in the UK Aon bikes super interesting know I’ve seen a lot of Aon bikes sort of on demo days but I’ve never had a chance to get really really up close and speak to someone from Aon so that was amazing Alex thank you so much for your time I know your stand was so busy but I really appreciate that they’ve invited us down to Duffy to go and look around their Factory and try some of their bikes which I’m which I’m really excited about to be honest because I think what they’re doing for mountain biking right now is incredible and realizing that you know how they’re working with the carbon tubes and the lungs that we can now size a bike correctly you know for length as well as height I think is super exciting so and the quality of those bikes was absolutely outstanding it was brilliant to see how all that comes together so yeah watch out subscribe to the channel if you want to see more from these both these brand I think Riley are going to be sending us a frame to test and hopefully we’ll get down to go and see Aon bikes pretty soon as well one the little quirky things that really caught my eye was this this wooden bike from Trumper absolutely beautiful craftsmanship no doubt about it the original carbon fiber uh if you think about it um just beautiful as to look at I can’t believe the attention to detailing this was absolutely incredible can’t imagine what they I like to ride and there was a a guy there who was sing a cork saddle as well so titanium chassis to the saddle and then a cork uh outside as well interesting idea also got to have a quick look at the hubs that Peak talk kind of on his channel a little while ago where the ratchet is actually on the disc side and the idea of this is that it balances The Hub a whole lot more so you can lace your wheel a whole lot more effectively you can run bigger bearings there’s a whole load of engineering stuff in there that makes a whole lot of sense um it was great to fun it in hand and see how it all worked and my major concern with this is just going to be Parts availability how they’re going to compete because they got to have a proprietary disc rotor and all those proprietary components I think for this to go anywhere near mainstream would be recommended if you like uh it just makes me very very nervous about the long-term availability of some of those parts s but I love the idea and I hope they go somewhere with it so one of the brands I really wanted to speak to when I was there was reap bikes now reap as far as I know are the only company here in the UK making Carbon Fiber bikes you know autoclaved and cut out and sort of factory production not like B is very craft Industries um but they weren’t there to speak to there was literally no one there the whole time I was there I couldn’t find anybody on the stand they had this one bike on display I’ve got some pictures for you and you can tell that it’s got a different level of engineering and manufacturer to most of the mainstream ma in factories bikes but um I’m still really short of information on this I’d love to know more about this brand but um yeah watch this Bas if someone from Reap is watching this please get in contact because I’d love to um I’d love to learn more about reap bikes they look great of course some the mechanics are had to stop by the BSC tools had a fantastic uh conversation with those guys they’ve got a brilliant range of tools that would go beyond what you’re going to get from Park and Uno they’re really geared around a professional mechanic working in shops the tools are expensive and made for people that are going to be using them all day every day and here you can see I was funling their their bare impressed really well Precision made stuff it’s just easy to use in the hand an absolute pleasure to to use thing that really caught my eye though was their spoke nipple drivers which go onto a quarter inch drive that You’ put into electric screwdriver or drill Etc now I’ve been eyeing these up for a little while and I wanted to see them in the flesh before I committed to buying them but they are really really beautifully well made and they’re going to speed up wheel disassembly and early stages of assembly massively so yeah they are getting added to the basket right away I expect to see them on the channel sometime soon really really impressive stuff okay that was a super quick map deck highlight re of the bespoke bicycle show it was a fantastic day out in fact the whole building was an experience it’s in like a Victorian Turkish baths inside a sort of swimm pool thing and they’ had like techno shower and all sorts of Cafe and just a great day out to be honest and superb to speak to some real Craftsman and thank you to everyone who’s spent a bit of time talking us through what they have to offer things that we haven’t really mentioned really are the steel bikes uh and these still frame manufacturers who are really custom making for very specific use cases like you know light mounts and paner mounts and bottle cage mounts and really trying to get a bike customized for a very specific type of like longdistance touring trip now if you like this sort of content please give it a thumbs up and if you want to know more about things like Riley and afteron bikes we hopefully get on the channel soon think about subscribing to the channel and getting notified as soon as those videos hit the Channel all right thanks for watching take it even [Music]