Kish Fabrication

Yeeeaahhh! Guess whose got a drivers license and 14 bucks and bought an SD card reader from Staples? THIS GUY! (Me, not the dog, don’t be ridiculous.)

But, as long as you want to talk dogs, I should clarify that it is NOT dog fashion week here, rather it is HUNTING SEASON (all caps to emphasize the noise), and after 16 or a hundred Bud Light Platinums up in the ol’ deer stand, things get blurry and it gets hard to tell the difference between a 12 point buck and a cattle dog. Unless, of course, the dog is wearing a bandanna.

(here be a dog)

Personally I found that nothing helps me stand out in the woods better than my vintage Primal Wear jersey:

So far I’ve only had one close call with a spear gun, otherwise it’s been working out just swell. By the way, it’s worth a minute of your time to image search “ugly bike jersey” (also, big ups to NAHBS for nailing a top 20 result on that page).

Easing into some bike stuff, we’re in the midst of changing up some ‘spec’ of our bike kits (again). We’ll be going back to using my all time favorite stems and posts by Thomson in all the kits, and also offering some more wheel options.

I don’t know what goes on outside of North Carolina (I have a very robust internet filter), but around here Asheville-built Industry 9 wheels are all the rage, and for good reason. Here’s some red ones on John B’s new single speed:

And speaking of single speeds, after some rigorous testing, we’ve figured out every SS cog stinks except for those from Asheville’s other mega-corp, Endless Bike Co., and we’ll be putting together a single speed kit soon using them. You can get a lil’ glimpse of one here, you’ll notice they are anodized to match the I9 wheels:

Also, apparently they smell nice.

We’ll also be offering DT Swiss wheels in all kits again. These changes will all be in place by the end of the year.

While we’re peepin’ John’s bike, I’d like to introduce our new and improved decals, which take the color out of the ‘dots’ in the logo, and put it inside the letters. We have them in white, black, red, blue, pink and green.

The headbadges look the same. Perhaps you’ve seen them before, in this exact shot I take of every bike:

Whew! Enough of that. Thanks for looking, check back soon for a pair of cool Christmas present bikes, and some mildly interesting news about a philosophic restructuring of the Kish bike empire…

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I should have updated this a while back, sorry. I’ve been waiting to find a solution to my camera>computer communication issues – can the world live without another picture of my dogs, or another titanium bottom bracket crotch shot? Obviously not, but we’ll have to make do without them for a little longer.

Until then, a few items of interest…first, the NAHBS show bikes have been sorted out, so that ship has sailed. Thanks to everyone who responded, we have some very cool bikes lined up! We’ll also be showing our one-year-late twentieth anniversary project, which makes it our 21st anniversary, which should give you a clue right there what it’s going to be about.

In non-NAHBS news, we’ll have a new color scheme soon for our short sleeve jerseys, it’s gonna look like this:

If you’re riding with Pinky Motter or Mango Kesler, it’ll look like this:

They should be here in time for the holiday money-spending season, so keep us in mind if you need another swanky stocking stuffer. They’ll be the same price as the others, $100, and ship free in the USA.

I’ll be back soon, if it’s not until after after Thanksgiving, I’d like to say a big thank you to all of our awesome riders, and everyone who bought anything from us this year. Especially the NC folks who have continued to support us by buying bikes, riding and racing them, and generally being the best unpaid sales reps we could have asked for. YOU GUYS ARE THE BEST.

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After resting on our laurels for a year after winning the Best Titanium Bike award at the North American Handmade Bicycle Show, we will be making our triumphant return to this fine, fine, expensive, fine event in February. This time around the show is taking over the Mile High City (not Portland, the ‘oh-my-I’m-high-city’). Denver!

(John Denver, dressed for a night out in Portland)

If you’ve spent your whole adult life trying to get away from snow, like yours truly, this is sure to be pretty traumatic. But Colorado is also home to some of our good buds, Andrews Designworks, Anvil Bikeworks, Spectrum Powderworks and a host of other cool companies that for some reason all have ‘works’ in their name. Which is ironic, if you know any of these guys. ‘Works’ may not be the first word that comes to mind when someone asks ‘what do these dudes do all day?’ Hey-O!

More importantly though, for you, the cash-strapped bike shopper, is we have a VERY EXCITING OFFER for you, especially if you will be at the NAHBS show in person. Are you strapped in? Ok, good. Get this. We need to have bikes to show, at this ‘bike show’. And we don’t want to build said bikes unless we know whose going to ride them (sort of defeats the purpose of the custom bike, dontcha think?). So, if you’ve been on the fence about buying a bike, GET OFF THAT FENCE IT WASN’T MEANT TO SUPPORT THE WEIGHT OF A FULL GROWN PERSON, IT’S JUST THERE TO MAKE THE COWS THINK THEY CAN’T GET OUT. Also, if that bike you’ve been doing all that fence-sitting about fits our (very loose) criteria of what would be appropriate for the show, you can save yourself some serious cash. These need to be complete bikes, and bikes of the sort that we typically sell (no recumbents, belt-drives, lawn furniture, etc). Also, preference will be given to those who can take the bikes with them at the end of the show (and not a minute before).

For starters, we’ll take 20% off the frame, and at least 20% off the parts, depending on what you need. Hell, for the money you’ll save on a bike, you could fly to Denver, see the show, freeze your ass off, and take your new bike home with you. We’ll also throw in some other goodies, and you’ll have the thrill of seeing your bike in tens of bike blogs, and the less thrilling experience of cleaning thousands of fingerprints off every square inch of your new bike after the show is over.

Sound exciting? Damn right it does! Better get a hold of us soon, and let us know what you have in mind. We need to get these bikes going, February is only a few short months away, and we need time to make sure that your new bike is built to the level that the world’s best weld-sniffers have come to expect from us over the years. HURRY!

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Hey everybody! Welcome to my new tree blog! The bike thing was getting a little old, so I’m refocusing (!) on my other love, the study of trees (treeology, for you science nerds). Check out this fine example, of some trees near and dear to me:

Trees! So much to talk about. Let’s start here: I’m just realizing I don’t know anything about trees, so let’s just fall back (!) on the bike stuff.

This is Mark S’s disc-enabled cyclocross bike. Mark lives in Washington the state, where it starts getting a little slimy this time of year, and this will be Mark’s new commuter, to compliment his other titanium cross bike that we built for him a few years back. It’s got a matching Kish titanium stem and steel fork, and Campagnolo Chorus components.

It’s always a pleasure to build bikes for Mark, since he always has a new paint scheme in his head, and often a few component challenges, such as ‘why not build a Campagnolo cross bike with disc brakes? certainly that’s a well-trod corner of the bicycle world’. Turns out it’s not, but consider it somewhat-trod now.

( insert joke about the dog being the shop manager here)

Also, John M’s giant tubed road bike is heading out to Maryland soon, not much to say about this one but ‘hey wow, why are those tubes so huge?’

In case this is your sort of thing (it is), there’s more pictures of both bikes here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kishfab/sets/72157631620519770/

Go check em out!

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[/lame alliteration]

Lest you think the Kish Total Race Domination is contained within the Triad, Triangle or any other three-sided area of North Carolina, I’d like to show you some photos that Sophie in the UK sent in from the world’s largest and grossest 24 hour race, “Ye Olde Mountain Mayhem”.

Photos are courtesy of Graeme Warren (I told you they were British, how cool is that name?)

Sophie’s team, the Dirt Divas racked up a second place finish, which ain’t too shabby, especially given the oppressive conditions (or, as they say across the pond, “weather”).

Sophie put in an impressive showing on her Kish 26″ (that’s not a typo, those still exist!) titanium mountainous bicycle, or at least that what she told me she was riding, hard to tell what’s under there.

So, congratulations to Sophie and the Dirt Divas, and a big thanks for the great pics!

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As the dog days of summer are just about wound down, Labor Day seems like as good a time as any to update you on what going on here.

First up: Labor Day Sale!

We don’t do those! Sorry about that. Isn’t it enough that I’m slaving away on a holiday for all 7 people who actually read this thing? You should see the condition of the ice cubes in my Sazerac right now, it’s deplorable how far they’ve melted down while I was trying to find a suitable dog picture for that first lame joke.

Speaking of deplorable, the ample rain we get ’round these parts ’round this time of year (much of which hangs suspended in the air for weeks at a time) has somehow given these mushrooms sentience, here’s one trying to block my access to Fred W.’s new 650B single speed:

I took the only safe way out, and ate most of the mushroom, and now I feel a lot better. Once these talking spiders stop crawling all over my monitor I’ll continue writing. Until then, here’s a couple more of Fred’s bike:

(The 650B fever is raging so hard in North Carolina these days, you may have noticed that it has spread to steel bikes as well.)

We’ve always got a few titanium bikes in the works, too, this one being notable for its contribution to the giant head tube arms race:

Last, Sarah F. from the UK sent in some shockingly high quality photos of her cross bike, this one being my favorite even though it probably serves as a better advert (that’s British for ‘ad’) for Chris King than for Kish:

She also sent along some very nice comments, my favorite of those being

‘I just want to say thanks for being so clever at making bike frames’

Which seems like a great note to end on. If only these spiders would SHUT UP ALREADY.

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Oh sure, it’s only June, and perhaps your shorts already feel like you’re teabagging a swamp creature, but let’s all pretend for a moment that it’s a cool September day, and we’re not choking on hot fog and being targeted for death by the sun…

Well, it didn’t work for me either, but here’s a few pictures of Jim W’s new rig, which will soon be tearing up the dirt in Virginia, as soon as the dirt stops being on fire:

Jim’s is a standard titanium frame with our Sram Force kit, and a DT/White Industries wheel upgrade, not to mention an old school SSM Concor ultramegasuede saddle. They still make those! How awesome.

I’m probably preaching to the choir here, but we can put a bike together like this for about $5500. Not exactly chump change, I know, but you can spend a whole lot more and get a whole lot less. Visit your local high-end bike shop, take a peek at the upper end Big Name production bikes and you’ll see what I mean.

Jim put a new spin on a popular paint scheme of ours, basically just changing the transition to bare ti from a fade to a hard break, using the same blue as the logos. It looks great.

(In case I don’t get around to making a 4th of July themed post, come back and look at this photo.)

Enough of that, it’s out of the cool air-conditioned office and into the somewhat less air-conditioned shop. Today we’re working on…another cross bike!

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Short sleeve jerseys are back in stock, this will probably be the last of them, so get on it!

You might notice the sizes stocked trend toward the large-ish, that’s because the jerseys run a little small small, despite being a ‘club cut’, whatever that’s supposed to be. So if you’re on the fence, go big!

You can get them in the store, and they ship free in the US ($16 shipping to Europe).

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European correspondent Dom reports:

“In a moment of madness I found myself driving to the south coast of the UK, putting my Kish bike on the ferry and then riding to paris for lunch before turning round and riding back to the ferry and then home. 250 miles of riding and lunch in Paris. Cracking day out.”

I was more or less up to the same thing.

Just swap out ‘south coast of the UK’ for ‘Orange County Solid Waste Convenience Center’, ‘Kish bike’ for ‘recyclables’ and ‘ferry’ for ‘Tacoma’. Oh, and ‘Paris’ for ‘Hillsborough’. All kidding and crying and raging jealousy aside, how cool is that? I’ll answer for you: oh so very.

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Our new shirts are here, and do they make a statement! They say “I love cool bikes, and I’m not afraid to tell the world via these sweet earth tones”.

They are printed on Anvil Organic T’s, which have a nice cut, somewhere between the ‘phony-vintage-too-tight’ style, and the boxy ones that only fit if you look like a snowman with the middle section taken out. Color is a lovely chocolate brown with pollen-color ink, unless there’s just a bunch of pollen stuck to it, like everything else around here.

The front print shows a map of the Old North State, with a nice ‘K’ stuck right smack dab (give or take 45 miles) over the top of the location of the Kish World HQ. If you still can’t find us by the map, our zip code is right there, too.

There is also a snazzy rear print featuring a Mason jar presumably filled with what they call ‘Carolina EPO’ around here (note, no one would every call anything ‘Carolina EPO’, that’s just stupid). The logo is small and subtle, go ahead and wear it to work, I bet your mullet will cover it right up. Business up front, party in the back!!

You can find them right here in the store, the price includes Priority Mail shipping in the US until May 1. If the store insists on charging you shipping, just pay it and we’ll refund it immediately. This deal goes for ALL the shirts and jerseys in stock right now.

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