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Filament brings an old-school attitude to an ultra-modern concept
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Most of the world’s carbon frames are made in a few dozen factories in Taiwan and China. These vast facilities with armies of technicians are a far cry from the workshops of the artisan framebuilders of yesteryear, but occasionally someone comes along who successfully marries the old and new worlds.
We first visited Richard Craddock at his home in Barnt Green, Worcs, in issue 20 of Cyclist in 2014. Working from his garage, Craddock began creating carbon fibre frames by hand, in the style of the old artisans, and in the process launched Craddock Cycles. That company is now known as Filament Bikes, but Craddock is still producing carbon frames to order in any geometry and any paintjob. And this is his latest creation, simply named the Filament.
‘Every part of this bike is new aside from the tube diameter,’ Craddock says. ‘This frame is the final culmination of changes I’ve been experimenting with for years. I just thought, “Let’s put it all into one frame.”’
Those changes come together in a frame that’s 200g lighter than the first Craddock. It weighs only 880g even with its dramatic paintjob. It’s below the surface, though, that Craddock has made the really special developments.
Finest Filament
Despite his small set-up, Craddock aims to be at the leading edge of bike design. Last year he produced the first frame to use Dyneema fibres in place of some of the normal carbon filaments that form a tube. While this latest frame sticks with traditional carbon fibre, Craddock has sourced new tubing made to his spec.
‘I searched suppliers out at trade shows,’ Craddock says. ‘It’s been a gradual process of a few years finding out who to use.’ A self-confessed nerd of all things carbon and cycling-related, Craddock has tried to fully exploit the strength of the UK composites scene.
‘The UK has a very good sector, as most of the F1 teams are in the UK. It also has a pretty good aerospace sector and marine scene on the south coast. There’s every opportunity to piggyback off that to buy very good product even in very small quantities.’
One of Craddock’s advantages is that not only is geometry custom-tuned, but so too is the construction of the carbon tubing and wraps. ‘The laminates are selected for each individual rider,’ he says. ‘I try to accommodate what people want, but temper that with what I think is good practice.’
The same goes for his approach to geometry: ‘I have to set it within the limits of the contact points, and where that falls is a negotiation between what the rider is feeling and what I’ve found with experience works well.’
For the Filament, Craddock moulded his own seatstays and chainstays where his previous Craddock frames used a ready-made rear triangle from Dedacciai. Similarly, he now moulds his own bottom bracket shell in-house – a single-piece carbon tube rather than the aluminium sleeve he used previously.
Inside the main tubes Craddock has placed full-length plastic mechanical cable guides. For anyone who has replaced internally routed cables, the advantages of that are obvious.
‘You’ve got to be a nerd about everything to make a really good bike,’ Craddock says. ‘You’ve got to fully understand things from a mechanical perspective and a cyclist’s perspective and do your research. I read scientific papers on a whole range of things.’
One such area is the curing cycle that bonds the resin and carbon fibre together to create his frames, which he does in his own homemade oven.
‘I’ve made my oven tall and narrow for a frame shape so I can really control the convection currents and airflow around the oven,’ he says. ‘I use a PID controller and a laptop to log data. I can graph it and examine how consistently the oven has kept the curing temperature correct and where it has applied the heat.’
It’s a little more complex than a standard steel Tig-weld.
Art and theory
Craddock has outsourced the painting to a local paint shop, but even here he has imprinted his own identity. ‘At first the Jackson Pollock paint style was just an experiment, but so many customers wanted it that it’s become a sort of signature for us. The custom paint scheme is part of the price. If anyone wants intricate artwork or pictures on it, of course the price goes up, but people want something individual that they can live with for a long time.’
Craddock reluctantly adds more employees to his one-man operation from time to time to cope with demand, but winces at the idea of ordering stock frames from overseas. While his waiting list remains manageable, he fully intends to continue wrapping, moulding and curing hi-tech carbon fibre by hand in Britain – the old-fashioned way.