If Matthew Sowter were a footballer he’d probably have won any number of Ballons d’Or by now, and multiple Players’ Player of the Year titles too.
His resumé boasts an array of industry accolades, and ask any framebuilder who they admire and Sowter’s name comes up time and again.
The South African came to the UK to pursue a dream of making frames, but when a series of jobs left him feeling let down by the UK framebuilding industry (one manufacturer ‘imported most of their stock frames from China’) he struck out alone under the banner of Saffron Frameworks in 2012.
Since then his frames have gone from beautifully crafted custom steel to appearing in the Commonwealth Games under Dan Craven, to this, arguably the most elaborate Saffron bike to date: Julian’s mixed-material single speed.
‘We started talking about this five years ago,’ says Sowter.
‘In between I’ve actually built the customer another bike, which he’s used to race cyclocross, but the original request here was, “I’d like a town bike and for it to be wooden.”
‘That kind of evolved into the bike we have here, which is to use in winter so he can train for cyclocross.’
Depending on what kind of riding and what kind of weather your winters comprise, the idea of this bike being a winter trainer might seem strange.
But as Sowter points out, it is eminently adaptable from single speed to 1x gearing, it has disc brakes, and the materials from which it’s made are innately comfortable and very robust.
‘The Columbus head tube and HSS HX-profile down tube – probably the biggest-diameter tube you can get in steel – and Reynolds 853 chainstays are super-stiff, and the partial steel top tube is another Reynolds tube usually used as the supporting brace to minimise flex in a tandem,’ says Sowter.
‘The carbon seat tube was made for us by Enve, the dropouts are stainless steel from Paragon Machine Works. Then there’s the wood.’
Wood-be racer
While framebuilders regularly work closely with their material suppliers to specify wall thickness or tube profiles, it’s not often a supplier has to work up its material entirely from scratch.
Enve Composites isn’t drilling for oil to make its carbon fibre.
But in this Saffron creation, Sowter worked with furniture designer and maker Sebastian Cox, who does things a little bit differently.
‘Seb has a woodland in Kent and they grow a lot of the wood they use in the furniture there, including this ash,’ says Sowter of the single bow-like structure running from top tube to dropouts.
‘He chose ash because of its lightness, strength and elongation – it’s a very flexible, malleable wood. He took a blank sheet of wood and cut the profile out. Then it was steamed, put into a jig, then hand shaped to get this profile.’
To call this aspect of the frame a work of master craftsmanship would not an overstatement, nor would be calling the frame that the ash ties together a work of art. But it has taken some serious work and careful consideration on Sowter’s part to incorporate it into Julian’s bike.
‘Because the wood has so much spring to it we’ve had to cover ourselves by making the top tube extra wide to resist sideways movement.
‘Then to build the bike I had to build basically a straightforward steel main triangle, then cut out the seat tube and top tube and replace them with the carbon ISP and the ash.
‘Getting the alignment was difficult, because the stays are asymmetric to fit the flat-mount disc brakes, and there was no supporting structure in terms of the seatstays to work off, as they came later.’
Crucially, though, Sowter had to accommodate one thing that his usual material choice of steel does not suffer from – structural changes over time.
‘We’re not 100% sure what the wood is going to do as the years pass – dry out, shrink, expand, whatever,’ he says.
‘To minimise that effect we’ve used special flexible epoxy resin around the carbon ISP-wood join, so the resin can elongate and flex along with the wood if necessary.’
Irresistible lines
Sowter’s steel and wood bike is both a masterpiece of design and an object of beauty, but it does throw up a couple of questions.
Isn’t it kind of heavy? And how much did it cost?
‘I thought it was going to be quite heavy, yes. But using Columbus Zona tubes instead of the wood has only 70g difference.
‘It’s not a light bike, but that’s mainly down to the integrated head tube and the BB shell, which houses an eccentric bottom bracket so you can adjust the chain tension for single speed without using horizontal dropouts. That shell weighs a tonne.
‘The frame cost about £6,500, which is probably too little, but I’ve taken the hit because it was a really fun project. And if the customer likes it, I’d like to offer it as an option in the future.’
As this last remark suggests, at the time of our meeting the bike was so new Sowter had yet to pass it on to its owner. In fact, he had yet to paint the steel (which ended up a dark metallic grey).
However, Sowter has since spoken to its owner, who proffered the following: ‘It rides like a dream. I cannot express adequately how thrilled I am by it.’
Time to place your orders now, and get some more ash trees planted in the Kent countryside.