- TONY’S HARDTAIL 29’ER -

Tony has been a big supporter of Feather Cycles for many years now. Whenever he comes to me for a bike, its always something I haven’t built before and he gives me a lot of freedom to just have fun and enjoy the fabrication process as well as learn a little along the way.

I’ve never really had anything to do with mountain biking, so I would have been the first to hold my hands up and say I’m probably not the right person for the job, but I also like a challenge, enjoy learning and have respect for other builders specialities. I also work in an industry where people are scared to share knowledge and lend a hand where needed. I asked Billy from Howler Frameworks many questions and he also sold me one of his proprietary chain stay yoke’s to design the rear triangle around. Another favourite feature of mine on the rear triangle is the direct mount brake posts. On my road bikes, nine out of ten customers upgrade from a plate dropout to a round dropout with built in brake mounts, it just looks so much cleaner this way regardless of how much extra work is involved.

From the get go, I knew I had a vision for this bike. I wanted to build something a bit different to what you generally see, but also try out some new fabrication techniques I hadn’t done before. I bought a set of tube rollers specifically to curve the top tube on this bike. I thought that would be very straight forward but didn’t anticipate the tube twisting as it was rolled through, so it became more of a challenge than I expected - probably something to do with the T45 aircraft tubing and its superior strength. The other tubes that make up this bike are a mix of Reynolds, Columbus and Tange.

The bike had to have the Feather aesthetic and that’s not easy to translate when you’ve spent 14 years building mostly road bikes. One thing I have always liked to do is to fabricate an interesting seat bolt and this bike lined me up perfectly to custom machine a barrel binder, something I had seen on a BMX frame about 18 years ago and had always fancied trying but never really felt it fitted the bill on a road bike.

This is one of those bikes which makes you want to jump on it every time you lay your eyes on it, perfect for cruising around nice trails and single track and just enjoying the ride. I’m sure Tony will have many years of fun on this one!