Forkin A!

So while Sarah is off doing community service this morning (don't ask) I'm building forks... more forks. I'm starting to think I'm actually a custom *fork* builder who occasionally also builds a frame or two - I must do 3 or 4 forks a week these days (for those who are curious, most of these don't appear on the waitlist, because they're built for other framebuilders or bike companies who don't want to be listed there).

Doing some rough calculations, I've built about 350 frames over the past 7 years (a decent number of those before I started selling them). For the first year or so, I didn't build any forks, but once I started, the ratio was about 1:1 (this is again an estimate, based on a quick tally from my records) - some people got a frame/fork, some people just got a frame, and some people just got a fork. So if that had continued to the present day, the frame count would be about 50 ahead of the fork count.

But in the last few years, I've gotten a number of contracts to build forks for other companies (mostly small ones) as well as increasing interest in custom forks for all kinds of weird projects - I think it's safe to say the ratio of frames:forks has averaged more like 1:2 for the last couple of years. And it seems to be moving more and more in the fork direction - this winter, I've probably done 3 forks for every frame (though I'm still trying to crank out frames at a rate of about 1/week - luckily with experience I've gotten a bit more efficient, so I still have time to do my chores around the house and even ride my bike sometimes).

A rough estimate of the tally stands today at 350 frames, 400 forks. And I'm trying to make it 350 to 403 by this afternoon. Fork! I wish the weather was nice enough to go ride...