It's a sickness—we know. Check out some of the custom builds we've created.
The Shotgun Bike
The shotgun bike is our ultimate up-cyling project. This bike was thought up one evening when we were brainstorming on what unique materials could we use to build our next bicycle with. We threw around the idea of a shotgun and low and behold Shawn showed up the next day with a vintage, double barrel, side by side, turn of the century Belguim shotgun. This bike not only features the shotgun incorporated into the frame as the top tube but it also features 64 vintage 44-magnum brass casings incorprated into the rims—a pain staking task to say the least. The entire frame, fork, and shotgun have been freshly gun-blued. It also features custom stainless steel handlebars and a modern disk break. No, it does not fire! Currently on display at Santa Barbara Cruisers.
Wood Bike
Photo courtesy of Michael Brown, Santa Barbara, CA
Photo courtesy of Michael Brown, Santa Barbara, CA
After a 20+ year wood-working career this was the bike that took me out of the wood and into metal. Some call it a wooden bike, some call it a coffee table with wheels. 20 years of engineering, high tolerance fits, and seamless joints in the wood industry and furniture design prepared me for the magical world of metal. This bike pays homage to my past—the love of wood working and furniture design—while allowing me to look forward to new innovative metal design and fabrication. This truly was my cross-over bike. Click here to watch a time-lapse of me building the wood bike. Currently on display at Santa Barbara Cruisers.
Gator Bike
The Gator Bike (bike #51) is a one-of-a-kind beach-cruiser style bike influenced by BMX. The frame was painted in-house by our master painter/color guru Shawn Ramirez. Like many of our collaborations the Gator Bike is an original one-off design. This custom build was specifically designed and created to be sold in the first annual SB Art Bike Auction. Proceeds benefited the Santa Barbara Bicycle Coalition. We would like to thank the local bike shops, Bici Centro, Cranky's, and Velo Pro, for helping with the build. Without them we could not have pulled this off. Currently on display at Santa Barbara Cruisers.
Rat Rod Bike
This is our national award-winning show bike (2013). This bike was made all in-house. Some of the features include a 1950's carpenter level (found at our local recycle center) downtube, the hubs are 1960's Atom internal drum brakes front and rear, the rear brake is operated by a suicide lever, operated with your left hand via rod linkage. Dual chains, 72 tooth sprocket, hand-tooled leather seat with nickel plated springs and undercarriage. Greeves motorcycle style turned in leading link dual coil over front suspension fork, 1990s downhill 3-inch wide racing tires. Flat, swept back board tracker influenced handlebar gooseneck assembly (dual adjustable). Solid aluminum knurled grips. Materials used: aluminum, stainless steel, brass, magnesium, titanium, and copper. Currently on display at Santa Barbara Cruisers.
"Big B" - In Production
What can I say, I got a big friend and he needs a big bike.
Bike 1
This is a replica of the Velocipede. I was asked to create this for a display of a bicycle timeline at Bike World during the 2012 Santa Barbara Earth Day festival. Currently on display at Santa Barbara Cruisers.
The First Santa Barbara Cruisers Frames
In 2008 we made our first 7 frames. I'm holding frame #1 with frames #2-7 in the background. Our first 25 frames were mild steel, straight gauge head tube and bottom bracket. The mild steel frames are the WB series. WB stands for the late, legendary "Wild Bill" Carson.
Square Frame
After the wooden bike but before the production of the WB series I made this one-off square tube bike with bladed forks, downhill tires, and a sterling silver Bentley emblem to boot. Currently on display at Santa Barbara Cruisers.