Richard Sachs Cycles

[e-RICHIE]

Beached

Last winter I found this shell on a beach in Lyme. And the shell found me. I can’t get a great image of it, but there ya’ go. It’s as if it doesn’t want the life sucked out of it so that I can tell this story. But I see this one everyday. TLD placed the shell on a stone by the back porch with some of her finds. When this shell and I met, for me it was as if life began. Again.

I wrestle with getting things right. The obligations. The responsibility. The obsession with editing out clutter so all that’s left is the elegance. It consumes me. More than it should. But I look at the shell every day, many times at that. I want what it has. And the harder I try, the further away it gets.

I’ve stared at this thing for hours. Days. It sits with such comfort. And doesn’t take a measure of things. It just is.

[e-RICHIE]

I think it was 1972 late summer when I walked through the door to this place. Ernie, the father in the YouTube, was probably younger then than I am now. And I lived with Barry (now Barrie) out in Kent and cycled into SE London to work daily. Some 10 months later, I came back to the states, ready to start college in Plainfield, Vermont. And then I didn't.

[e-RICHIE]

Loadout 1.0 today atmo -

[e-RICHIE]

That's Rich.

[e-RICHIE]

They came and they went. This is what recovery looks like. The plans for RSCX 2017 were laid down. We juggled some dates. Ate the sandwiches. Drank the San Pellegrino. Picked through the rugelach. Posed for pictures. Kicked the tires. Posed for pictures. Inflated the tires. Marveled at some of the new things that you won't see here (yet). Spoke and spoke and re-spoke again about how fortunate we are to be on the receiving end of so much love and goodwill. Ogled again over some of the new things that you won't see here (yet). Shot pictures of some of these new things that you won't see here (yet). And that was all on Friday. And we did it all over again on Saturday. This is what recovery looks like. Now we wait. Rochester looms. That's where we tee off in another week.

All This By Hand

[e-RICHIE]

At The Bench Again

Back in the game. A 58cm c-t for a long-waiting client who’s getting his second RS. Tubes are cut, material interferences are check and rechecked, and rechecked again. And holes are drilled and pins inserted. Tomorrow I disassemble this and add all the braze-ons to the main tubes and the RS logo badge to the front. Then I reassemble it all, fluxed ‘n shit, set the regulators, clean the tips, put my dark glasses on and make love until my strength is gone, and when the morning light comes streaming in I’ll get up and start brazing again. Amen. For about two hours in Deep River it’ll be like Apocalypse Now. Hmm. I may even put The End on my YouTube stream.

[e-RICHIE]

Tomorrow’s Thought

It takes a life’s work to find the right tools, make them your own, and learn how to stand at the bench. Fine bicycle making isn’t the result of what you bring to the table as much as it is what you leave on it. Routine. Repetition. Relentlessness.

All This By Hand

[e-RICHIE]

Build Sheets

I’ve never drawn a frame. Or plotted points and intersections on paper to see where things go, or might end up. No CAD here. No formulas. My work, all of it going back to before I started my brand in 1975, has been done by feel. That’s not to say I haven’t a clue. Only to suggest that the answers are in me. As long as the right questions are asked, I can do this. I know what goes where from doing the work. And doing more of it. Mostly though, it’s from being around the sport. Or as I’m fond of saying, being of the sport. It’s where myths, and bullshit, come to die. If bicycle making is music, my corner is jazz. It’s improvisation. It’s about producing a sound that isn’t scored, it just comes.

All This By Hand

[e-RICHIE]

But Who’s Counting

I don’t know how many file strokes it takes. My tool of choice is a Bahco 5 1/2″ Barrette with an aggressive cut. I think these are the ones with the low numbers. 00 for example. Not sure. But it takes a lot of strokes, and I don’t care if the return dulls them. I buy these by the dozens. And I charge a lot. Somehow the expense gets covered. Point is, I just keep filing until I don’t. And that’s just on the lugs. And it’s also on the fork crown. The dropouts. All of them. On the bottom bracket shell. You get the picture. You get it, but I’m the one doing the work. Done enough, and often too, each throw adds to the already established muscle memory. I mean. If I have to think about any of this, I’m fucked. Heck. If I’m fucked, what about the client writing the big check. So yeah. I have to have a sense. My reality is that the sense began its development in 1979, some seven years after I first held a file in my hands. And before that, I was a student. But that first of what would be many trips to Italy to see how the established masters of the trade were standing at their benches – that 1979 sojourn, the one that lasted 20 some odd days, and what I saw, and who I saw – it never left. It grew inside of me and in spades. I wanted some of what they had. Those were different times. Those times are gone. But I carry with me some of what I saw, what I learned about how work was done, and the proper way to stand at a bench. Oh and the files I use are flexible, so I worry not at all about flat spots, or undercuts, or something that would look like Bizarro’s face. And my WAG is over 54,000 strokes per frame. That’d be a two point five day frame. The team frames take less time, so they’d have fewer strokes.

All This By Hand

[e-RICHIE]

[e-RICHIE]

Narrow

There’s a wide line between the conceptual and the execution. A gap. That space between what you have in mind and the result you get. Once you touch pen to paper, or hand to metal, or – all bets are off. If a maker has a real job, not just a life of play as it may seem from the outside sill, it’s to take what’s on the bench, and the ideal he walks through the door with each time he begins again, and wed them. If years have given me any gift at all, it’s the curse of looking at all of it and wondering what it takes to tame the beast. And it is a curse. Because accepting less than what you dream about is a compromise. And the gift of the curse is that it feeds the hunger to try again, again.

All This By Hand

[e-RICHIE]

Okay just one more before I put this back on the lift and start trimming wires and removing all the drool.

A 54cm road unit. PegoRichie tubing. Richie-Issimo lugs, bottom bracket shell, and 1.0 fork crown. RS Piccoli Gioielli front and rear dropouts. Campagnolo Record 11 throughout. Challenge Elite 700 X 25mm tubulars. Cole Wheels. Selle San Marco Aspide racing saddle. Cinelli Dinamo stem and 'bars, and Neos seatpost. Cane Creek 110 Classic headset.

Color matched to Pantone seven thousand something-or-other with 4296 head tube panel. Graphics by House Industries.

So many Builder's Balls so little time.

All This By Hand

#brandonneuring
#hauteframebuilding
#neverfuckingrelent

[Lionel]

nice color !

[e-RICHIE]

[e-RICHIE]

[e-RICHIE]

This Is Now

I left the red thing behind in 2012 but still do some paint work that looks red from the shop window. The scheme we did beginning in 1982, the one on many thousands of RS frames – well, that’s history. There are times I look at some of the versions, particularly those from the in-between years, and wonder, “Uh. What was I thinking?” But by the end, those last few seasons before I pulled the plug, I considered the colors, the art, and the execution so evolved that it matured to a level I knew could be taken no further. So now, but now when a client asks for red paint in any shade that is red, when that’s the work order, and it comes back looking different than anything from that 31 year window in which things looked the same, but really weren’t the same at all but looked the same because unless all several thousand were actually lined up next to each other you’d never believe me – but really, they were all quite different from each other…so now, when we do a frame with red paint whether red red, or light red, or dark red, or Bahama Mama red, and it’s a post-2012 version of red with the graphics that House Industries created, I like it, all of it, so much better than anything at all. Anything.

All This By Hand

[e-RICHIE]

[gggross]

Great color combo

[e-RICHIE]

[Pi Guy]

So pumped!