Tag Archives: NAHBS 2014

North American Handmade Bicycle Show 2014

nahbsThe North American Handmade Bicycle Show 2014 (HAHBS) takes place in Charlotte NC this weekend.  Being I am a cycling aficionado, I could not let the opportunity pass to visit the show.  In past years, I’ve seen only pictures of the different hand made bikes in the pages of cycling magazines.  So I made the trip today to the Charlotte Convention Center to check the event out.

I was NOT disappointed.  I had a chance to see some really nice bikes, paint jobs and some very interesting  ideas.

Rather than show picture and a bunch of text, let me just post a few comments and then you can check out the gallery of some of the most interesting bikes!

  • There were many manufacturers with wood bikes.  The frames were all wood and while not exactly my cup of tea, they are nevertheless amazing.  I must say I have never ridden a wood bike before, so who knows…  If I were to try one out I might like it.
  • Same for bamboo.  There were quite a few bamboo and hybrid bamboo bikes.  They were all equally amazing.
  • There was a vendor there that had a technique to take a mold in plaster of your feet.  He then would use that as a mold to create a hand-made carbon fiber shoe!  The shoes were pricey but looked awesome.  The manufacturer said he obtained his knowledge from making custom ice skates.  These shoes were amazing.
  • There was one manufacturer that made a carbon bike with a honeycomb open air weave of carbon.  Most unusual.  I have seen pictures of a dude in Europe that made something similar but this was over the top.
  • Several bikes had alternate power supplies – electric motors that is.
  • Tandems.  Many tandems.  In all kinds of materials.  Interesting that many had belt drives instead of chains.  Incidentally, my cousin Bob has been using a belt drive on his Seven tandem for many years now with very successful results.
  • Pay close attention towards the end of the gallery – there is a red bike with some really intricate details.  The builder is from Japan and the bike had a $20,000 price tag.  Certainly very artistic and the details had many, many hours’ worth of work written all over them.

An so, here is a full gallery of the photos I took today.  Yes, some of the pics are not exactly great since I took them with my iPhone.  But you get the idea…

Well – what do you think?  Comments are welcome!