It was a long drive but we made it! Back again for Bespoked Bristol 2013 and a weekend of the UK’s most beautiful bicycles. If you can make it along, do come say hi and we can show you what we’ve been up to.

Last month a Skinnymalinky headed west to the beautiful island of Islay and into the hands of Brian Palmer (of Washing Machine Post renoun). Brian had previously reviewed a Stoater during the summer and although not quite understanding the disc brake aspect on a drop bar bike, he liked what he saw and was keen to get his hands on a Skinny’.

Brian’s had the good fortune to have reviewed many bikes of quality over the years, so we were pleasantly surprised to receive email updates with exclamations of delight after each of his island forays on the Skinnymalinky. So does the Skinnymalinky have an ‘inner Colnago’? Read Brian’s review to find out.

Congratulations to Stewart Ferrie of Lanarkshire MTB club in winning one of our first production frames, having been chosen out of around 200 people to complete our online survey in the latter part of 2011.

Rob Penn (author of It’s all about the bike) kindly took time out of his busy schedule at Bespoked to do the draw – pictured above. Having been whisked around all the builders as part of the judging panel he was obviously feeling a bit ‘overwhelmed’ by things by the time he joined us for the draw.

We’d also like to say a big thank you to everyone else that took part in the survey and helped persuade us we were on the right track of building steel production frames in the UK. We were taken aback at the passion most people have for steel bikes and we hope to match those expectations with the type of frames we want to build.

Look out for some more photography of our new frames on the website in the next couple of days.

More than a year since we started planning a range of handbuilt production frames, we’re proud to launch our new frames, all inspired by Scotland’s roads, trails and mountains and the fast and furious cyclocross scene.

The Stoater allroad frame takes its queues from the US gravel grinder and monstercross scene, but reflects the British attitude to steel road and trail riding. Equipped with disc mounts, the frame design allows clearance for mounting a rack and mudguards and the optional adjustable rear dropouts provide flexibility for fitting either a Rohloff/Alfine hub, derailleur gears or a simple single speed.

Whether bashing out 40 miles along road and trails, or a challenging century or two over a couple of days, however it’s specced, the Stoater is all about the pure enjoyment of go-anywhere riding.

The Stooshie is a no frills, Reynolds 853 steel cyclocross race frame  equipped with discs mounts and massive tyre clearance to keep things rolling on muddy race days – or longer endurance-cross style events.

At the end of April 2012 we’ll launch the Skinnymalinky road frame. Again built using Reynolds 853 frame and fillet brazed for the same smooth look as the Stooshie and Stoater, it will also come with options for mudguard and racks front and back.

If you happen to be at Bespoked in Bristol this weekend, do come and say hi. We’ve even got biscuits – oh and t-shirts!

More pics of our stand over on www.facebook.com/shandcycles.

Our production frames are shaping up nicely and although we’ve been too busy preparing for Bespoked Bristol to properly update the website, we thought we’d share some shots of the Stooshie and Stoater cross and all road frames here – with more pics of the Stooshie to be found on our Flickr pages.

Well get more information and photographs online next week (along with an online order form), but if you’re interested in making a preorder, just drop us a line.

Here’s a quick sneaky look at our production cyclocross frame ready for paint. Excuse the crappy camera-phone pics.

All production frames are configurable for any braze-ons. This one’s getting a single bottle cage mount (I know!) and routing for a 1×10 drive train. Twist our arm and we’ll put cantis on it instead of disks.

We’re officially launching these at Bespoked Bristol but we’re taking pre-orders now. Call or email for more details.

No posts for ages then three come along all at the same time!

This time headtube badges. Pewter headtube badges to be precise and although a bit more work’s required, the first samples have exceeded expectations with plenty of definition retained in the details.

Main issue is finish and we’ll be looking at darkening the background, along with finding the right shade of blue. We’re also planning to reduce the thickness and maybe the size a bit too.

Can’t wait to see them on our first finished frame.

We’ve been a bit quiet online whilst getting the new workshop in order, but we took a break for a bit of a geek-fest yesterday with the arrival of our new jigs that had been held up in customs.

Made by Don Ferris at Anvil Bikeworks in Colorado, they really are a work of art in their own right – even how they were packed into the crate shows the care and attention Don takes in his work. You’ll find some more pics over on the Shand Facebook page.

A picture’s worth a hundred words, so there’s not much to say about this post other than here are some frame graphics ideas we’ve been working on.

The intention is that these will be painted under a clear-coat lacquer rather than using decals. From an objective point of view, number 1 is probably the front-runner, but I personally like 4 as it’s gotta stripe – and as everyone knows, stripes make you go faster!

As ever, feel free to let us know what you think.