The last we heard of Alan Sikirič, he’d completed Koichi Yamaguchi’s Framebuilding School, his class project bearing the master’s unmistakeable influence. Alan’s back with a new project that has taken Yamaguchi’s fluid style and reinterpreted it as a Cycling Weapon of Mass Destruction.
The groundbreaking silhouette of Alan’s Glossy Black Track is actually due to the use of a curly Columbus seat tube for a top tube. This might wind up the purists, but no-one got anywhere by following the herd. The result is a stiffer frame by meeting the seat tube at a higher point.
The seat stays are a combination of four S-bend pipes that Alan had lying around, fed through a bender and sleeved internally. Necessity, as they say, is the mother of invention. This is still a ‘practice’ frame, the first by Alan since his graduation from the course, so excuse the raw finishing at the joins.
Given Alan’s previous portfolio of tandem tall bikes and other Franken-frames, the Glossy Black Track is a next-level development. I’m looking forward to seeing what he comes up with next — like Yamaguchi, the more unconventional, the better. See more on Alan’s blog.