From an Idea to a Dream

This bike started with a simple thought.

About two years ago, Konrad and I were in the workshop and said to each other:
“We should really have a stainless-steel road bike on the website.”
We already had a Columbus XCR gravel bike as an example, and over the years I’d built a number of stainless road bike frames for customers — but somehow, never one for myself.

So we just began.

One day.
A set of Columbus XCR stainless-steel tubes.
Cutting, marking, prepping.
That quiet rhythm you fall into when you work side by side and everything moves faster than expected.

Konrad had a few great ideas — small design tweaks to make the frame cleaner and more elegant. That’s also when the idea for an ISP, an integrated seat mast, came up. And later, a custom mast topper to match.

The idea grew.
The project felt exciting.
It was becoming something we really wanted to finish.

And then… it stopped.
Like many good projects do.

Other frames came in, life got busy, and our half-started stainless build drifted to the side of the workshop.
A day, a week… eventually almost two years passed.

But some ideas stay with you.

At the beginning of 2025, with Bespoked Dresden on the horizon, we pulled the frame back onto the bench.
And this time, we saw it through.

The result makes us both genuinely proud.

One of the details I was most excited about is the 24-karat gold plating.
The mast topper, the down tube logo, and the little tree on the head tube all have real gold accents.
That idea actually came from a former frame-building student who stripped his Colnago, plated parts of it in gold — even some of the aluminum components — and then had the frame painted so the gold stayed visible.
That bike was incredible.

I knew immediately:
I need to try this one day.

And now it finally happened.

Seeing the gold come together on a stainless frame feels incredibly satisfying — like the perfect finishing touch on a long-delayed project.

So here it is:
A stainless-steel road bike with gold details.
Built slowly, paused for far too long, and finally brought to life.

A dream made real.

I’m really happy with how it turned out.
I hope you like it too.

And now the real question:
Do you want to experience this yourself?

Not just own a bike.
But build one.
With your own hands.
With all the ups and downs, the ideas, the changes, the moments of flow — and that unbelievable feeling when your dream suddenly exists right in front of you.

That’s exactly what you experience in my framebuilding course.