A THING of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
John Keats (1795–1821)
Somewhere deep in the heart of the UK, nestled in a, what I imagine to be a quite tiny, workshop you will find Richard Craddock. One of a very select group of custom frame builders in the UK working, in-house, with carbon.
99.9% of carbon bikes are made in the far east, using moulds that allow for maximum efficiency in production scale. Of the 0.1% of carbon frames left, you will find that 75% of them come from Italy.
Then there is Filament – formerly known as Craddock Cycles. The lovechild of Richard Craddock, and, I suspect, the subject of a great many conversations within the family about sanity!
Richard creates beautiful, really beautiful, custom carbon frames in his workshop
Filament refers not only to the carbon fibre that I work with, it’s also the cycling thread that we have running through our lives.
The frames are made by Richard in his workshop in Worcestershire using the tube-to-tube method. There are no fixed metal moulds so he’s free to use any geometry.
Each frame is unique.
Prices start at £2,680 for a full custom geometry frame with fork, two colour paint scheme, Hope headset and seat clamp. This is by no means cheap, but in line with top end custom steel frames, and cheaper than some of the other top end carbon frames made outside of the UK – heck it’s nearly £2,000 cheaper than the top-end mould-made frames from the big-S!
Keats was spot-on!
You can see this Filament (fully built) at Bespoked next week, or check them out on social media: