Schlick Cycles

On Saturday night, February 20^th Schlick Cycles was part of the 6^th annual Nut Factory Open House  Located in the historic Nut Factory building at 3720 N. Fratney St

The following artists had their studios to show their work and working environments: Christopher Poehlmann, Gregory Klassen, Michael Davidson, Schlick Cycles, Tom Jelinske, Shana McCaw + Brent Budsburg, Annoushka Peck, Will Pergl, along with some special guests Cody Frei, Alec Regan, Dan Lawton and several others.

Schlick Cycles was a pretty busy place! We had several versions of the Shark, Smitty, SuperFast and Simplified Bikes as well as Tom Teesdale’s Mountain Bikes.

In addition, Greg’s friend Tom displayed his art – really cool, LARGE pieces, accessible and somewhat ironic art. “Spokes Model” Dave’s metal pumpkins got a good reception.

This year there is a good website showing photos, artists and other pertinent info. Have a look at:

http://nutfactory.shutterfly.com/

Hope to see you at the next party!

Photo by our buddy Tracy Brown!

Schlick Cycles | The Nut Factory Open House 2010

Join us on Saturday night, February 20^th for the 6^th annual Nut Factory Open House  Located in the historic Nut Factory building at 3720 N. Fratney St. in Milwaukee.

The following artists will open their studios to show their work and working environments: Christopher Poehlmann, Gregory Klassen, Michael Davidson, Schlick Cycles, Tom Jelinske, Shana McCaw + Brent Budsburg, Annoushka Peck, Will Pergl, along with some special guests Cody Frei, Alec Regan, Dan Lawton and others yet to be announced.

The Nut Factory is located in Riverwest on N Fratney Street 1 block west of Humboldt Ave between Keefe + Vienna.

We are in Unit 2B and it looks like it should be a pretty busy place.  Greg’s friend Tom will be displaying his art – really cool, LARGE pieces, accessible and somewhat ironic art. Dave should have some of his metal sculptures as well. We will have finger type food, cheese, veggies etc. and wine.

There may be more but that is what we know about for sure.

This year there is a good website showing photos, artists and other pertinent info. Have a look at:

http://nutfactory.shutterfly.com/

Hope to see you there!

John & Greg

Link to Google Map:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&ie=UTF8&om=0&msa=0&msid=116708516255797257381.000445a8496be7d563733&ll=43.087413,-87.906847&spn=0.013226,0.028925&z=15&iwloc=000445a85435ba89ba1b6

P.S.  We realize many of you are not from the Milwaukee area, but you may know someone that is or you may be traveling. Let someone know about Schlick Cycles – you are our best salespeople! Thanks.

It was a real pleasure to meet Elisa who was visiting family in Milwaukee. She is from Birmingham and runs the Bike Skirt website and works at a local bike bike co-op in Birmingham called BiciCoop.

Elisa stopped by the Schlick Cycles shop with her sister where we chatted many things bike discussing her city, our city and some of the projects at Schlick Cycles including the Shark, Smitty, The Zize Project, Internal Hubs and our desire to open a commuting and every day cycling hub in Milwaukee.

Elisa also got to witness one of my favorite times at the Schlick shop, the opening of a box from our esteemed builder, Tom Teesdale! This particular box contained the first 3 production frames from the new Superfast model. Very exciting!

Great meeting you Elisa hope to see you again next time you visit out fair city!

Take a peek at Elisa’s web site Bike Skirt which is about Girls, Bikes, Their City and Lots of Skirts!

Check out The Bici Cooperative
From their site: “The Bici Cooperative has a goal to create easy and equal access to cycling by providing affordable bicycle maintenance, services, and education, as well as a forum for sharing bicycle knowledge, activism and community.”

When it came time for Dave to pony up for a new ride he didn’t have to look further than our own builder Tom Teesdale to make his new steel beauty! See, Dave had already ridden the life out of a Scandium rig Tom built years ago. Literally, the frame finally broke but then it was a super-light race frame that was only supposed to last for a couple of years. Dave had ridden the snot out of it for a bunch of years and really liked how the frame handled. So, with a change to True Temper steel instead of the fickle Scandium, a new frame idea was hatched with some cool updates like the revised wishbone seat stay and, of course, provisions for disc brakes.

Keep ‘er here for updates as the bike comes together.

Next on the agenda a custom fork that matches the super-cool wishbone seatstay!

The first prototype of the Smitty was assembled in about an hour and a half with parts we had close at hand in the shop and, while we had a general plan, the end result exceeded our expectations and left us with a very cool ride and time to get to the Brewer’s Hill Superweek Race!

We started with a hand-built frame from Tom Teesdale, coupled that with a Salsa Fargo fork and added a sweet custom paint job in metallic copper.

We added a Cane Creek S2 Ahead Set, Easton EA70 stem and Titec H-Bar handlebars for the control center.

The Ritchey saddle sits atop a great 27.2 Sasla Shaft™ seatpost.

A black Sugino crank with a 42-tooth chainring handles the front end of the chain loop while the rear hub, an 8-speed Shimano Nexus hub with a Coaster Brake (Yup, a coaster brake!), handles the rear. A Shimano Micro-shift twist shifter connects us to the hub. The front hub is a Shimano Generator unit to power the headlight.

The rims are Salsa Delgado™ 22.5mm hoops built with Wheelsmith spokes and wearing HUGE Schwalbe Big Apple 2.35 tires.

All the parts really work well together and the bike is a blast to ride. If you are looking for an All-City, commuter ride the Smitty is a great choice.

We had the adjustable bars lying around and after a couple of failed attempts finding something of the shelf these bars helped us dial in the fit for Syd. In fact, they will be staying on the bike until we can get a permanent set finished. No brakes yet! Careful, Syd!

This refurb job is being done on a 17-inch Univega 507 mountain bike. I believe it is a 1995 model. It was my wife’s bike for quite a while when we were dating and pretty much got hung up when our daughter was born 10 years ago. It never got ridden a ton but is still showing some signs of age and I want to change the purpose of the bike since I’ll be using it now.

Lawill Leader 3

Gone is the very cool ControlTech Lawill Leader 3 fork and in its place is the original Univega ridged fork. The stock Univega fork is a very nice unit with tapered and butted blades so it rides great.

The wheel set was upgraded to Shimano XT hubs and some sweey Ritchey Vantage Rims that I’ve had forever.

Univega 507 mid-transformation

Hookworm Tires

Say bye to those cream-colored Panaracer Magic Tires. They are being replaced with Kenda HookWorm tires. This simple change is what is really changing the character of the bike. Going back to a ridged fork and having a Commuter/City flavor about the thing, plus the copious pot holes in our fair city demanded some cush to the tires and these deliver in spades!

Fat Tires = Phat Ride!

Away went the whatever-it-was gel saddle my wife used and on went a Sellitalia Turbo saddle. While I am still partial to Flite saddles this one was in the shop and has a bit more beef and structure to it than a strictly competition saddle has. Weight is not a huge issue. Besides, I like the white color on this bike.

Handle bars. Bye-bye to the MTB bar and barends. Don’t need you any more. I just went with a wide 3-inch rise Cro-Mo bar. I looked, briefly, at a Ritchey Rise bar but that will be going on my Teesdale MTB so it did not get the call.

If you have an older but loved bike consider throwing some love at it! If you haven’t got the time, shoot us a note. We’ll treat the old girl like she was one of our own.

While we all love the Shark around here we still often ride other bikes. The Ralph Cycles 17-inch hardtail shown here is being refreshed with a good, thorough cleaning and some parts replacement to bring it back to serviceable condition.

Ralph Cycles MTB frame circa 1995

This particular Ralph frame was one of 6 built by Tom Teesdale in about 1995 for the Ralph Cycles racing team. This frame is serial #3 and I raced it inthe WORS series as well as MTB races in Minnesota and Iowa. It is in pretty darn good shape considering it was my primary MTB for about 3 years but has been mostly siting around since. Built from Reynolds 853, it is a strong, light frame and incorporates Ralph’s T-Bone seat stay that we used to help keep the seatstay flex down with the then powerful V-Brakes.

For this refurb job we are going to leave the color original for a couple of reasons.

• I like it
• Paint is still pretty good
• Can’t get Ralph Cycles decals anymore

The RockShox Judy fork is a pretty stock unit but has Arlo Englund Air Cartridges in. Hopefully those still work but I am not opposed to going back to urethane or whatever the bumpers were. This will not be a competition bike any more and may even get a ridged fork.

More as the work progresses.

If you have an older but loved bike consider throwing some love at it! If you haven’t got the time, shoot us a note. We’ll treat the old girl like she was one of our own.