Ariel Bikes
Tom Godwin, founder of Ariel Bikes, started building frames for the open market in mid-2023, after three years of research and practice. Located in the south-western Scottish town of Dumfries, his plan is to stimulate the UK market for e-cargo bikes. Tom explains, "UK currently has annual demand for approximately 1,000 whereas France, with a similar population, has annual demand for 60,000."

While the demand for e-cargo bikes in France is likely to come out on the other side of its boom period, there's a case to be made that the UK has yet to experience theirs. If so, Ariel has come along at the right time.

Tim Godwin of Ariel is sees vast potential for e-cargo bikes in the UK. 

Five Land
After some years building for Shand, in 2017 Matt Stitt and Callum Fisher decided to go into frame building as a B2B company based in Balerno, on the outskirts of Edinburgh, and now fabricates for Shand, Cotic, Mason, Pipedream and others, offering mid-volume production, product design and prototyping, working in steel and titanium. Recently Five Land launched their own brand: Method.

 Bikes for all the family in the Five Land booth

Flying Scot
The Flying Scot is a story of collector who became a frame builder. Andy Fraser began collecting the iconic Scottish brand in 1997. This included a 1980s frame that Graeme Obree rode successfully to launch his career. In 2004 Fraser set up a workshop outside Edinburgh and started to make frames under his own brand names, Flying Scone, and Frahm. In recent years he has moved farther out, near the East Lothian coastline.

Those of us who were there remember this bike well

The Flying Scone and Frahm brands are primarly steel builds with carbon forks and incorporate progressive geometry. Any makes a few frames for people, but doesn't call himself a framebuilder. "I don't really have a brand. I just build frames as and when time permits and when people bully me into it. I'm really not a commercial entity. My gravel bike was called 'Ciarlatano', sort of poking fun and because that's all I am." He wrote modestly in a post-show email to HBG.

Frahm throwback bike a racing machine with fenders, rack, and bell added for messenger use

We enjoyed the historical notes of his work. The dimpled mudguards and rack from Velo Orange on the Frahm are a throwback to the 1950’s when out-of-work pro’s would adapt their race bikes and take work as bike messengers. The choice of Ritchey bars brought to mind the great American frame builder, Tom Ritchey, who is an advocate for adapting a single bike to many purposes and surfaces.

Tomo Bikes
Way back when,  Jonathan Thompson started building frames as a hobby. Gradually he saw it as a lifestyle business from his base in Chertsey, at London's southwest fringe, and 2014 started selling his bikes.

Jonathan Thompson brought his bikes from London for the show. His T-shirt says it all!

His output varies by customer demand, but personally he mainly rides offroad singlespeed, fixed, and tracklocross. The term 'tracklocross' refers to a track frame Jonathan converted for dirt use.

Check the wheelbase on this off-roader!

The blue TT frame pictured was built for a five-day tour to the 2019 NAHBS in Sacramento, California.

Bikepacking on this? It happens! Here at HBG we live and learn

He installed a different fork and used a regular drop bar and wore a backpack. So technically he was bikepacking. Gotta love that! Jonathan still rides this bike, so he cleaned it and brought it to the Brazin' show.

Lone Wolf
At the current rate of exchange in August 2024, a US customer could get a custom steel frame and fork from Lone Wolf for about $1,000.00. It's hard to see how he can sustain these prices, so best advice is get it while you can! Founded by Gary McKenzie and located in Nairn, at the far north of the Caledonian Canal in the Moray Firth, Lone Wolf opened for business in 2022.

Gary McKenzie (r) and his interesting-looking light cargo bike. And check those bars on the black track bike!

In choosing his show bikes, Gary chose a light cargo bike that showcases his bespoke fork designs, as well as the black fixed wheel, that combines old and new.

You just don't see bars like these anymore. We love it!

The handlebar on his black fixed-wheel bike is a 1930’s model with a tubing diameter that's not used nowadays, so he made a custom stem for it with a distinctly racy look that follows the slope of the bar.

HROK/Stout Cycles
Okay, so this is why we come to bike shows. Otherwise this embryonic brand would have remained unknown to us. Chances are we'd not have found it in the chaos of Instagram!

South of Edinburgh lies the Tweed Valley, in the Scottish lowlands. Here are some of the best mountain bike trails in the UK ... and they have rooks too. If you know this bird, it can be restless and noisy at night. Like, keep you awake noisy sometimes. Russel Stout paid tribute to his noisy neighbors, as well as Norse invaders from long ago, in naming a bike company he founded in early 2023, HROK. This is old Norse for Rook.

Russell Stout is testing the waters with his HROK prototype. We're pretty sure the shirt/bar tape colour match is intentional!

Stout was formerly a business partner in the Shand workshop, which was very much an incubator of Scottish frame building talent, and which may yet to prove as influential as a Whitcomb or Serotta in the USA. The next part may be frustrating to some readers who have seen his stunning gravel bike. They aren't for sale yet. Aluminium is a proven material, but it's waiting for its renaissance, and the feeling is that he's helping create a wave but he's going to wait for that wave to rise before paddling into it. Nobody will fault him for that.

Russell makes a convincing case for aluminium as a frame material, saying. "It's an overlooked material, but it's easier to work with than steel, it's both lighter and more resistant to corrosion. It's also more cost-effective to machine or CNC small parts without resorting to 3D printing or other processes in steel."

It's such a great looking bike. We borrowed this pic from bespoked.cc

As a start-up frame building brand with limited resources, his argument holds water. And for those of us that have ridden aluminium MTB bikes... anything in the ballpark of the Klein Attitude of the early 1990s is spectacular, to say the least. "Overlooked" is probably the most apposite description of this frame material.

These appear to be the head tube, bb shell and dropouts on the HROK bike. Notice the paint shop too

In addition to making frames, Russell has also set up 'big bada boom!' paint works. This guy has a timeless sense of style, we expect to see a lot more of him in the pages of HBG.

Willow Bikes
Here's another offspring from the Shand workshop. Actually it's Steven Shand himself. We'd love to have a three-way interview with Steven and Ben Serotta, but that's another feature for another time. Shand started frame building in 2002, then founded his eponymous brand in 2004. He wanted to be at the forefront of the adventure bike scene—which in 2004 he definitely was with numerous outstanding off-road, but not MTB models, but in 2017 time came to sell the company after wowing everybody who saw his bikes over a span of more than a decade. 

The re-emergence of Steven Shand on the frame building scene is a big plus for the UK industry and customers

The Shand brand, along with a consultancy contract with Steven, was purchased by the corporate Liberty House metals group who promised to do much for the UK cycling industry, but found it too heavy a lift and in 2023 sold the brand to Coventry, UK, company Rideworks. Rideworks is a small, hardcore, components brand that has been doing a lot of good work in the MTB for several years now, but sadly for those Stateside does not ship to the US or Canada. 

In 2022 Shand launched Willow Bikes in Falkirk, in the Forth Valley about equidistant to Glasgow and Edinburgh. There is a lot about this to like. When a master builder returns to their roots, it has to be a good thing with all the added business wisdom that such a move brings with it. Chipps at Singletrackworld noted a few years ago that few, if any UK frame builders at the time would accept as many "Can you just..." requests as Shand. That brought to mind the comment around 2013/14 from the owner of a US frame building company, a person who had occupied a high position at the outdoorwear company Timberland, that part of Serotta's woes in 2013 stemmed from a similar willingness to serve the customer.

E-cargo bike from Steven Shand of Willow

Willow bikes come with a choice of high-end steel or titanium tubes. Looking at the offerings he brought to Brazin' we're seeing a design range that runs from  conventional road bikes to a really interesting e-cargo design that we'd like to do a deeper dive into. It's clear that Shand has lost none of the visionary talent that earned a near cult following that spanned the globe in his former work. Look for more on this frame builer in HBG in the coming weeks.

Directors
A statement from the show founders went: "The exhibitor interest is building, we’re getting more media attention, and the attendee turnout exceeded our expectations. Today has been really encouraging for the 2025 show planning, we’re getting lots of ideas how to enhance the show and bring people together in creative ways."

The Brazin' trailblazers. The show founders (front row: fith, sixth & seventh from left), management team, and almost all the exhibitors showed up for the group shot at the end. Photo: brazin-scotland.com

The founders called the show an incubator for Scottish frame building, but we think 'accelerator' is more accurate. It's hard to see how the Shand Cycles of old was not the incubator. Whatever, it's a great thing to see such energy and industry here. Social Media has a role, but it scarcely scratches the surface of the world of frame building and small component makers, and if it does, that's all it does, There's never a deep dive. One of the best things about handbuilt bike shows is encountering frame builders you've not heard of, and finding out a little about their background, their method and their output. The Brazin' show was great in this respect. at HBG we look forward to its continued growth and develoment as a showcase for the best of the Scottish bike industry.