Experience has taught Meszler that having a bike custom built completely changes the experience for a rider. “I’m shaped really funny, so none of the stock frame sizes fit me well,” he said with a smile. “I have absurdly short legs and short femurs, so I don’t fit anything with traditional angles. I had a bike custom built for me a couple years ago with a custom frame and it’s so much nicer to ride on.”
“Most bikes will fit a lot of people OK,” he added. “The bikes we make fit one person perfectly. That makes a huge difference over a hundred-mile bike ride.”
When it came time to launch his own bike building venture, Meszler’s “addiction to bikes” paired perfectly with Klumpp’s welding skill. “Nate only started riding bikes last year, but he’s a certified welder. He went to BOCES to specialize in aluminum welding, which is near impossible for the thickness we’re doing, so the fact that he can melt them together is incredibly impressive,” Meszler said. “I’m kind of like the brains behind the whole operation and Nate is the brawn.”
Sitting in the middle of their operation at the Foundry is a fit bike, where the whole process begins. Meszler will have a customer hop on the fit bike, where he can adjust the size and angles of the frame based on their body type and what kind of biking they’re interested in doing.
“Basically while they’re on the bike we’ll be talking about what kind of ride they want,” Meszler said. “If they want it to be an unforgiving race bike–it will be really, really stiff so all the power goes to the wheel. We would make that out of aluminum, because aluminum’s tubes are fat so they resist flex a lot better.”
For those looking for more comfort than speed in their ride, Meszler says steel is the way to go. “Steel is a really comfortable material and its tubes are a lot thinner. That way it can flex more, so that when you hit a bump it flexes and it rides a lot nicer. It’s really smooth–you can ride on it for hours and hours and not get numb hands.”
Meszler says that while the bike industry has been heavily pushing carbon-fiber frames, he believes that metal is a wiser choice for its durability. “Carbon fiber is like this overly expensive plastic that can break when you fall, then you’re paying $5,000 to replace the bike,” he said. “I love aluminum–it rides really great and you can smash it and it’ll hold together.”
“Most people write off steel as a heavy, cumbersome, terrible material to ride on,” he added, “but it’s so comfortable. It’s smooth, it’s snappy, and it’s exactly everything carbon fiber is, just 100 grams more. It’s a lot harder to sell steel in a bike shop because steel is old world and people want new, so bike companies have abandoned it–except for small builders like us.”
Once they’ve nailed down the appropriate materials and the measurements, Meszler plugs it all into their designing tool–a program called rattleCAD. After the design is in place, the tubes are ordered (most of their metals are sourced from Columbus Tubi and then cut and filed to fit together. From there, they are placed inside a jig that holds them all in place so that Klumpp can start welding everything together.
“We also designed all of our own tooling, so our jigs are designed by us and made by us,” Meszler said. “I got in a really bad crash this past year in a race, so I had some down time to start thinking about how to design a jig, and that’s kind of where this whole thing came from.”
In the past three months, the guys at Nickel City Cycles have already built four frames and are currently working on their first custom order. Meszler test-rode one of their first frames, taking it on a successful 400-mile ride, hitting 50 mph twice and climbing nearly 10,000 feet on it.
As of right now, Nickel City Cycles’ steel frames are ready to be built and sold, but they’re still perfecting their technique with the aluminum frames. Completion time for an order is slated at about six weeks, between ordering metal parts, labor and painting. Basic chromoly steel frames will start around $800 and aluminum will start somewhere around $1,500. “It can go up from there, depending on how crazy the labor is and how expensive the materials you want,” Meszler said.
To get more information or start the ordering process, call (716) 380-1389, send an email to nickelcitycycles@gmail.com, or send a message to Nickel City Cycles on Facebook. They are located at The Foundry at 298 Northampton St.
Nickel City Cycles will also be on hand until 3 p.m. at this today’s Second Saturday event, for those who want to check out their shop and learn more about the custom bike building process.
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