Restlessness!

I’ve never spent more than 5 years in any one place my entire life. Even as a kid, I almost never went to the same school for more than a year. Although my desire for change has slowed over the years it hasn’t gone away. I’m now 41 and my wife and I spent some time thinking what to do next. She suggested that since I love cycling I could takeover an LBS from someone going into retirement. That was the spark. I thought “I want a new bike - why don’t I just make one.” I’m a firm believer in being able to do anything if you put enough passion and thought into it.

To turn the idea into reality, I started thinking about what I wanted in a bike. The shortlist was:

Lateral and torsional stiffness
Comfortable
Custom sized
Light
Carbon

Wanting it to be made of carbon didn’t make things easier. All of these companies spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on R&D put the first doubts in my head. I had never worked with the stuff and maybe this naive viewpoint is what allowed me to continue. After a bit of research, hearing all the stories of CF bikes falling apart under the rider without warning or frames ruined because they fell over on a bike rack, I soon added bombproof to the list above.

The last 5 years have been spent working toward the goal of starting the business that I just registered in April. I’m not yet building frames for the public yet but that will come soon. After developing the prototype that I ride regularly, I started to think about all of the test materials I’ve destroyed and how carbon has a reputation of being fragile and non-repairable. I started fixing some of those test pieces and found that I could make them just as strong as the originals without adding too much weight. It was time to try it on a real bike.

I’ve spent the last 15 years working in quality assurance and have seen many examples of theory going terribly wrong when put into practice. So, I chose to test systematically before starting. Getting broken bikes turned out much easier than I thought it would be. It took one add in a German cycling magazine and I got so many offers from people, who had accidents that I was turning away many more then I could handle. I chose a number of frames with different types of damage and went to work. I’ve fixed all but one of them. The last one will be special but more on that later. The repaired frames were sent to a testing laboratory where various tests to check the structural stability were performed. All passed. To be sure, the lab also sent them for impulse-thermographic imagery. This is a special testing method that allows you to find defects under the surface, where they could not otherwise be seen. All of the repaired areas showed no problems. In the mean time I’ve started taking on repair jobs. PTC is now open for business.

The name PolyTube Cycles comes from the way I make tubes. I wanted more stiffness then the bike I was riding at the time offered. I’m not a big fan of oversized tubes but looking at the big names, you would think there is no alternative. If you just add material you’ll get a stiffer tube and if you increase the tube diameter, you can make it stiffer without adding material. That makes the tube thinner and more susceptible to impact damage. It’s also ugly to boot! You can change the shape of the bike but then you can’t use it in official events (not that I do any racing, though). The solution I chose is to run several tubes parallel to each other. Of course, it isn’t as simple as that. The tubes needed to be “woven” to each other but if you cut through them it looks like multiple tubes running parallel.

Where am I going? I’ve already started with repairs and will continue with that for awhile. I hate throwing things away and just because a frame is cracked, doesn’t mean it is trash. I really enjoy taking a splintered tube, sanding it down layer for layer and building it back to new. My next step will be some customisation work, which is where the last frame comes in. I’ve never been a fan of external cables and so in addition to the repair I’ll be moving the cables inside and making the frame look anything but like the big box name it started as.

This type of work is fun because no two frames ever have the same damage so you have to start from scratch every time. But, my real goal is to continue with framebuilding, however. I’ll be making some more prototypes and testing them myself as well as having labs verify my results. When I’m confident I’ve got my process down I’ll start offering to the public. I still won’t be giving up my day job any time soon but maybe (hopefully) some day...