Kevin Wolfson of Boston-based Firefly Bicycles explains how the company got creative with titanium
Words Will Strickson Photography Firefly
Firefly was founded in January 2011 by Tyler Evans, Jamie Medeiros and Kevin Wolfson. The trio had worked together for years designing and building custom frames at Independent Fabrication, but when IF decided to relocate from Boston to New Hampshire, the friends decided their framebuilding fortunes might lie elsewhere.
‘We wanted to stay in Boston, so took the move as an opportunity to build our own framebuilding business from the ground up,’ Wolfson says. ‘We wanted to focus on high-end materials, so we started making stainless steel and titanium frames.
‘Since then we’ve shifted our focus completely to titanium and a ti-carbon blend that gives us the versatility to build every type of bike we want in any custom geometry.’
It was a gamble that paid off. A decade on and Firefly has a worldwide reputation for its titanium and has long since expanded to a team of five, with the addition of mechanic Scott Novick and head finisher Kate Mills.
‘A big piece of our identity has become our finish work,’ says Wolfson. ‘We do a lot of custom finishing. We have a huge capability to create custom graphics with raw titanium finishes, mixing bead-blasting and brushed and anodised titanium to create graphics without the need for paint.
‘One of the nice side-benefits of our approach is that because we’re usually using raw titanium finishes there’s a unifying identity between our bikes. Even with totally different custom finishes they’ll still look identifiably Firefly.’
Kevin Wolfson, one of the founders of Firefly Bicycles
There have been engineering innovations over the years too, with Firefly developing a proprietary head tube design, proprietary 3D-printed chainstay yokes for gravel bikes, 3D-printed dropouts and its own seat collars, stems, seatposts and headsets.
Putting all that together creates a fleet of bikes that, while ranging from fat bikes to lightweight racers, remains visually consistent. But while such aesthetics are to be applauded, the underpinning factor is function.
‘We got into 3D-printing three years ago, starting with the yoke,’ says Wolfson. ‘It was a new technology, but once it was proven enough and we had access we dipped our toes in.
‘The yoke is a helpful component because with gravel bikes there’s a pinch-point between the chainrings and larger tyres. If you use a regular-shaped tube it’s either weaker overall or you have to sacrifice frame stiffness.’
The 3D-printed part solves this issue because more elaborate shapes with internal supporting structures can be made, and it’s elements like this that give Firefly the ability to offer highly nuanced custom builds behind otherwise quite prosaic sounding titles: Road, Road Plus, All Road, Cyclocross, Mountain, Utility, or ebike Upgrade.
Cross colla
Pictured here is an All Road bike that came with a slightly different brief to normal. ‘Shimano came to us in the spring as it was planning to launch the GRX Limited groupset for Unbound 2022 [the gravel race in Kansas, formerly Dirty Kanza].
‘It wanted to work with a handful of builders to build frames to set up with the new groupset,’ says Wolfson, explaining that Shimano supplied everything apart from the frame, fork and headset.
‘It wanted a bike that could fit 45mm tyres, would work with the mechanical-shifting GRX groupset and could fit a 27.2mm seatpost. The rest was up to us.’
The team took the chance to build an experimental frame with a geometry, tube selection and finish they’d have been hesitant to do for a customer.
‘The geometry details we tried were mostly in the steering – we pushed it more towards the mountain bike end of the spectrum with a trail of over 70mm,’ Wolfson says.
‘That translates to more stable steering at speed but a little bit slower steering than what we’d usually do. It also has a little bit of a steeper seat tube than we might usually use, and we tried dropping the bottom bracket height a little bit lower for further stability.
‘We wondered if that would create issues with pedal clearance, but I’ve yet to run into a problem on rooty or rocky singletrack. It feels good so far.
‘In terms of finish, we’ve been experimenting with anodising larger sections of frames. Our concern was that it would look splotchy or uneven over time, and the fact the colour shifts just from the oil on our hands.
‘We used the lowest-voltage anode colour because that creates a very thin layer, which makes it easier to apply colour and keep things looking even over joints and welds. We also bead-blasted the frame before anodising the entire thing to see how it turned out.
‘It doesn’t look perfectly even but it has been interesting to see how the finish has shifted depending on where I touch it or which parts I clean. It will be a good option for some customers.’
While having Shimano picking out the framebuilder was a great opportunity, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that GRX’s aesthetically focussed product launch was the perfect fit.
Aside from the performance benefits of titanium, it’s the unique yet identifiable look that lets Firefly’s quality engineering shine.
Bike pictured: Firefly All Road, $10,000 (approx £8,300). Firefly framesets from $4,900, complete bikes from $6,500, fireflybicycles.com