Bamboo Bike Studio Blog

Hi Everyone,

On a bittersweet note, co-founder of Bamboo Bike Studio and cultural icon, Sean Murray, is moving on from the bike building game.

Sean is a brilliant guy, and we would not be what we are today without him.

His seriously exceptional work ethic, empathy, and curiosity combine to make him an absolute dogged creator of things… the superhero of our startup. He went from total fabrication novice two years ago to a totally legit problem solver/designer/builder. One of the greatest strengths of our organization was that prior to starting to make bikes, Sean hadn’t ever really built anything. His ability to tap into his inner novice made us all better teachers and explainers.

Whether it was a 2am crunch session of prepping a workshop, riding 100 miles a day for test riding, business meetings while riding the Brooklyn Bridge, or staying late into Saturday night helping workshop builders finish strong, Sean was there with endless stoke for the mission.

Some of the most fun times I’ve ever had have been philosophizing about problem solving with Sean while building a solution… (I know welding in t-shirts and Crocs is not exactly proper safety precautions, spare the emails…)

I hope they’ll be tailwinds and hard problems to solve in the future for you, Sean.

Hi Everyone.

As a follow up to the development blog post… I graphed some of our building time logs.

*This is not 100% accurate* but you can see how we’ve progressed over the past couple years in terms of building speed and efficiency. The y axis is value added build time. It only includes finish work up to having a ridable bike, but not necessarily making a custom museum piece or show bike… that takes a LOT more time and patience.

This translates to lower labor costs for the factories (a big step towards making cheaper, more accessible bikes), and it translates to better experiences for people taking the workshops.

Value Added Build Time vs. Number of Bikes Built

Each of the drops in build times is the result of a combination of big and small innovations adding up… sometimes it’s better organization, or a new tool, or a new process, or just plain getting better…

It’s far from perfectly objective measure, but I thought it was interesting, and its one way to show how all the hard work and focus on improvement is paying off.

I wish we had an objective measure of frame quality, because we’ve really made some incredible leaps.

And yes, I’m aware that I am a total nerd.

We’ve been working for a long time on making the benefits of bike making more accessible… in Brooklyn, San Francisco, at schools or communities where we are building factories.

Fulfilling this mission takes a lot of people and a lot of work… there are so many problems big and small we need to solve, that we’ve arranged the Studio into a solution factory.

Every weekend, after the last bike rolls away and Justin and Fence eat pulled pork sandwiches at the Ice House, we switch into development mode.

In development mode, we pull our outstanding projects from under the workbenches and turn into a brainstorming/prototyping/fabricating whirlwind, getting as much accomplished as we can Monday through Thursday (making a horrific mess). On Friday, we clean up and get ready for the following workshop.

Our projects take us from material testing, sourcing, tool fabrication, alternative teaching techniques, bike geometries, destructive testing and finding lower cost and more effective ways to put the bikes together.

Justin is really the engine that makes this run. He’s totally split between running the workshop and pushing development. It’s a tough row to hoe, but he’s got the energy and talent to pull it off, week in and week out.

Every once in awhile I get chance to lean back in a chair. I stare up at the ceiling of half finished frames and think about all the bikes that have rolled out of the shop. Every bike has at least one story attached to it.

There are so many stories swapped over the sounds of filing lugs and discussions of music. Workshop participants always have stories about other projects they’ve done, travels they’ve been on, scary encounters by bike, or even just how they found out about the Studio. We tell stories about each part of the process, how we figured this out, and why we do something in a certain way… And every bike built in our Studio becomes it’s own story.

The diversity of the stories is endless. We’ve had 12 year olds and 78 year olds. We’ve had Navy lieutenants and Yoga instructors, loggers and high school teachers, grandmothers and triathletes and some pretty intense punk rockers.

Everyone  struggled and triumphed at some point in the process. Each bike build has a bit of drama, a key ingredient to a good story, and something that makes it memorable. We’ve been so fortunate to have been a part of so many of these stories.

Some of the participants in the workshop have kept the building aspect of their story going… Building bikes on their own with the kits, becoming volunteers and then instructors in the workshops… We’ve even turned the San Francisco workshop over to a couple of  enthusiastic and competent builders, and one is coming to Ghana to help train the workers in the factory.

Some participants have taken their bikes on long tours across countries and continents, some commute to work, some ride with their kids, some show them off to their friends, some ride with their loved ones on the weekends… it’s always fun for us to see people again and chat about their bikes and to trade new stories and plans for the future (which are types of stories, I guess).

All these individual stories have been woven together and it’s created a nice community of builders, all telling their stories and spreading the message wherever they are.

The bulk of our business is starting to come from referrals. We’ve been flattered by the media attention, but it’s so much better to have a self seeding community of bike makers, storytellers and friends.

Because Steve Jobs says so.

To make your own tools is to be human.

Greensboro, Alabama’s BikeLab is about more than fixing bikes and building a few frames. Their goal is to create a self-sustaining, community-operated bike workshop.

BikeLab directors Blair and Mark welcomed me and some kits down to come build frames with bamboo straight from their (neighbor’s) back yard.

The big ideas–creating systems, empowering people, engaging minds–had a great backdrop of tiny details–squeezing Mark’s down tube into a conventional kitchen oven…

…roughing bamboo on the porch…

…and making a drying rack with bricks and sticks.

Show your support for BikeLab as Blair and Mark move forward in Alabama.

(all photos by–you guessed it–Mark and Blair)

Cool article about a couple of guys spreading the joys of making and building.

In Brooklyn, we have a place called 3rd Ward that is very similar, although less high tech.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/business/11ping.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1283101317-53zEi3e5CRJUbDLTGx+jzg

I just read an upsetting article in the NYTimes.

It’s sad for me to see the fishing industry get squeezed out of Portland.

Everything I build and every skill I have, I trace back to working on my Dad and Uncle Rob’s fishing boats in Portland Harbor, and absorbing all the great knowledge of fabrication, problem solving and how to work.

My love of nature and my motivation to work comes from spending the time on the water, and seeing what the ocean can provide.

It’s a terrible waste to see our conduit to the provisioning capacity the ocean destroyed.

Turning our backs on the ocean won’t save it, it only opens the opportunity for exploitation.

The Bamboo Bike Studio and Project would not be close to where they’re at without the experiences and inspirations that I got from working on the waterfront in Portland.

This picture is of my Dad’s boats. I learned how to weld from my Uncle Tim on the boat on the right, which has allowed us to prototype and fabricate the jigs for the Ghana factory (I’ll make a blog post later).
I learned how to fix and replace hydraulic hoses on the boat on the left. That helped me make our fatigue testing lab equipment, which took our bikes (along with Justin and a lot of hard work) from cute and clever to functional and robust.