My friends over at Nickel City Cycles, a couple of frame builders in the heart of Buffalo, NY, have been working on a new bike for one of their race team members, Marit Ogin. They intended to showcase the bike at this year’s North American Handmade Bicycle show in Louisville, KY, but they were simply too busy with build orders.

Patrick Meszler, designer, and Nathan Klumpp, metal melter, met three years ago when Nate went into Campus Wheelworks for a bike fitting.  Pat, who’s been a bike mechanic for 13 years, works at the shop part time in sales and repair.  The two got talking, and three years later Nickel City is going strong. Building frames was a natural progression for the pair given their love of the sport.  They also mention both being oddly proportioned and have always found it difficult to fit on stock bike sizes.  Now they custom build frames for any proportion.

Steel is real…and sometimes more realer with a little bit of carbon fiber.  In Pat’s words: “…Steel just has a great buttery smooth ride that makes you want to ride all day. With different tube shapes and sizes we can make a bike that is silky smooth or a crazy stiff or anywhere in between…it’s not heavy (I ride a sub 15 lb. steel road bike and a 17 lb steel CX bike). I would love to build a stainless steel frame…and we are capable of building aluminum (our first frame was aluminum)”.

Nickel City sponsors a women’s road racing team, all of whom have never raced before. Pat and Nate are happy to support the beginner ladies because there is very little support for new women in cycling.

Here’s some bike porn…