 I haven't been on this bike for a while, the tire pressures feel a bit soft, but yeah look after it, won't you? Bye darling, I shall miss you. Oh great, it actually gets ridden. And I could bring the video and get a few of your customers talking about it. Yeah cool. Next Friday. What time do you have beers from? Now there's a bit of shit in the back of my car, because I collect, we get firewood from the local park. There's an UNO card in here as well. Just one UNO card. That's how we play UNO at my house. Does this have a special button? A lot of brands are trying to represent a community and I think with Curve what makes us really different is perhaps that we actually are all riders and we're all testing our products and ensuring that anything that we produce we've ridden and we wouldn't release anything that we wouldn't ride ourselves. Or outside looking in it's like man this is like a really strange cult with all these people kind of riding curves and going on these silly adventures. Some can just, they just sound crazy. It's like what do you mean Jesse Cross the US in 18 days? An average 400 kilometers a day? Yeah. Like that just, I wanted to bring you along a little visit. I'm at 36 Bond Street in Abbotsford. This is Curve Cycling headquarters. About six months ago on the BikeChase YouTube channel we did a full comprehensive piece on the Handmade Bicycle show showing off a number of the local brands here in Australia that are building handmade bikes. And in that video I asked our audience which bike, Bram, would you like us to approach and do a comprehensive review on BikeChaser. Curve Cycling, they won the vote. So today I'm going to introduce you to the crew here, a little bit about Curve Cycling and I'm also going to be taking home Rhino's bike. Let's go have a chat. How are you mate? Practically scripted. Yes. Hello. So what are we going here? This is a good looking joint. This is Rhino's house. Yeah right. Yeah. How long have you been here for? It's nearly a year. So we've kind of moved out of our shed. We've grown a bit in the last three years. Kind of a steady growth and a change in the business. So Curve kind of started off as a as a wheel manufacturer and trying to understand carbon and why it's so expensive and why there were only a few players in the market. And then two and a bit years thereafter we started making our titanium and steel frames. So it was kind of the pursuit of all these adventures we were going on and testing the products in those. So like the tour guide, we tested our first mountain bike rim which is pretty much North America over the Rockies from Banff all the way down into the finish which is New Mexico. And Jesse came second in that and we were like yeah we've got a great product here. The carbon's holding up really well in a really difficult environment and then started making road rims as well. And then Jesse took our first wheel set into the transamerica. So it was nearly 7,000 k's across the US and he won that. And the wheels held up again really well. And we've just kind of it's been an evolution of that kind of principle of we're all riders, we all love cycling and just kind of taking on adventures and sometimes those adventures require us to build like a new bike. So this is one I'm going to take away, which is yours. Yeah this is the one you kind of did a thing at the Handmade Bike Show all those months ago. Yeah and it was bike chase the audience voted. They wanted me to do a curve review. That's right. So how do you feel? So here we are. Are you okay with me riding your bike? Your wish is pretty much being granted. Thank you. Yeah I'm happy with you riding my bike. I mean we're pretty much the same size. It's actually a bit small for me because this is a prototype. So final production has just been agreed upon. So there are a few tweaks to things but yeah don't break it. Look after it. So before we go there you need to quickly show us like what's going on. You've got to beast up here. What's going on here? My special princess which has just come back from Ares Rock. As you can see she's been ridden hard and long. Like it's three and a half thousand k's off road. This year it started in Tasmania. Does that sort of thing excite you? That dirt and mud and just it's been taken for a proper ride? It excites me. It's frustrating when it's not you that gets to go on these adventures but I've been very lucky and have gone on some great rides over the last couple of years. So I was very happy to see Adam get out on the bike. Yeah this is a gravel monster cross bike so it's actually something our engineer, Niam had a lot to do with and Jesse because everyone was kind of making mountain bikes and then just putting a drop bar on them rather than actually thinking a bit more about the geometry and what's required for these like ultra kind of off-road races. Hey I switched my phone off man. This is all you buddy. That's my wife she's calling from the US. Are we sure? Yeah. How'd you want to get it? No, no, that's all right. Yeah so this is a gravel monster cross bike and it's something that we're actually further kind of developing around a three inch tire which is going to be pretty exciting. Actually Adam's just jumping on what will be what will be the monster cross v2. There are. Oh there he goes. Oh no. Oh wow. That's heavy duty. Look at that guy. Yeah he's a big beast. Big beast. I feel so light because it's not loaded. Yeah. What were you calling it? I was calling it Dr. Deal Good or Mad Max. Something to do with Mad Max. Maybe call it Mel. Just call it Mel. Yeah. Mel Gibson. The little little brother of that which we're pretty excited. It's the steel Kevin so we've made made Kevin which is these guys. Yeah okay. So you can run like a 650B wheel up to 2.2 or you can run 700C by 45. So you can see here like these two are set up in 700C mode and a bit of gravel and then that dude over there is in kind of Kevin party mode which is 650B 2.2 and there's something magical about steel bikes that especially that one in 650B like it just feels really really right. It's just a lot of fun. It's so that's doing really well. We did a small batch of production in steel and then we've kind of put in our second batch already hopefully ready for Christmas. So if you're looking for ideas yeah I think steel Kevin should be on on the shopping list. I like this little Kevin you've got here. And you can see you've got a huge amount of clearance. We designed our own forks as well. So what could you fit in there? Oh you can go 650B 2.2 or 700 by 45. So who does your paint jobs? They're all very nice looking. Yeah most of our paint done in Australia is Bikes by Steve. He's more of a small independent painter and he kind of does a lot of work with Bastion, a lot of work with Prova and we're very lucky to have him work with Curve as well. So I actually did a piece on Bikes by Steve. Yeah I'm bike chaser. It gets about 400 unique page views a month. A lot of people searching for him these days. But I'll link to that below this video if anyone's interested in Bikes by Steve. He's a very very good painter and to get someone that really understands how to how to paint titanium is quite hard. His quality of work has really kind of been recognised by a lot of manufacturers and a lot of frame builders. So yeah thanks Steve we appreciate you mate. Yeah and then we've got another air. So it's a similar one that you're going to take out but this is kind of in mechanical jewellery format and with a different kind of wheel build a bit of a shadow rim. Steve this is your beast isn't it? So Steve what do you do here? I am the brand founder and I help with products. Yeah okay. Products design through to production. All the production relationships are my relationships. So how did you come up with the design for this bike? Is it 24? Is that right? It's 23. There's a bit of a story as to how many there are, why it's here and how it got its name and but yeah this is prototype number one and it started off as being my birthday present. Oh okay. All right so I'm born on the 23rd of December and originally I wanted something that wasn't quite part of the curved lineup. That was going to be special to me because I've been working with the bashing guys for the last pretty much since they started really since three two years now so I started letting this paint booth a lot of the the bikes that were and are painted are like they're both my paint jobs. I used to do before other Steve took over and started doing all the paint because I used to do painting as well. Yeah so yeah. Oh you were in another box by Steve? Yeah it's passed by Steve's so yeah and yeah originally I was speaking to James the head engineer there and Ben from Bastion that I wanted to do a special project and I wanted them to be involved and it actually started off there's a few this is actually the idea actually came from the original Cannondales the system six that was aluminium and carbon okay but we kind of took the Belly disc which is that bike yeah kind of just knocked it up a notch basically try to show you a bit of weight out of it try to add a few design cues that I wanted to see on the next version of the Belly disc. The topper and the seat post are by Bastion. Yeah that's where they come into it so I presented the idea. So this is very Bastion-y isn't it so this is what you're talking about? Yeah so yep and you can see their logo just here and with curves. There's quite a few details in it so I like the collaboration. The design was 100% me using fabricator in China that we know really well and trust and rely on. They actually developed their own method of building a frame with a void in it basically and still have it square and true and so what's this bike going to be like to ride? It's pretty racy yeah yeah it's racy and comfortable at the same time it's a fast road bike straight bridgeless seat stage that was kind of an aesthetic thing that was brought across and a lot of people already have highlighted that aesthetically it looks tidy. So now we have a semi-scalloped chopped and welded chainring clearance built in dimple essentially. Yeah right. The first bike we've had with the integrated head tube. Because there's two two carbon tube sets that you can kind of build a bike up from Bastion so you can either go with an intermediate or a quite stiff and it's your lucky day because you get the super stiff ride. So she's even racier I find. It's interesting because the great thing about the bikes is you can kind of tweak every element from the wheel set and its depth to the stiffness of the the carbon which is quite cool as well because no rider is the same and there's still a few design things that weren't finalized on these two bikes which was essentially kind of just the tube tubing here we were speaking with the engineer and with James I think and they realized that you didn't need this huge area of adhesive so that allowed us to kind of just make it aesthetically a bit prettier and actually the final design will actually be chopped even further. Same angle as the seat stay right and the same and then down tube same angle down tube down here so just a few little things takes out a little bit of weight like this here it goes just the stamp of it being the curve fashion project here and it's number one so what started off as birthday present to myself yep is now the first limited edition product which is kind of cool yeah a lucky 23 there's a few people who say oh it's such an air Jordan thing this and that air yeah 23 yeah it kind of just ended up that way yeah and air because the original frame construction during had a void in it had nothing but air in between the the main triangle so to me it just made sense to call it the Belgium yeah all right what about what about these ones here this is a Kevin in party mode as you can see he's got chunky tires on and he's ready for a bit of fun this is where this is like Kevin's grandfather like this is where Kevin started life was the version one and the version two of the grovel and then we made a cyclocross bike and then this is the natural evolution of things so it's a bit more bike packing and adventuring orientated but you can also run it on the road so that's that's what that one is so the steel one we showed you earlier this is just the titanium version yeah okay and then this is a bike that we it's our very first belgium the classic that Jesse and Sarah both rode in the transamerica and the only variance was the disc this is actually even earlier version which was our rim brake and lb the people's champ you can see he's kind of got the people's champ kind of logo on on his bike and he rests at the australian road nationals a few a few times yeah right so we kind of wanted to make it a bit special for him and as you can see he's got a super super pro long stem and kind of really aggressive position on the bike but it just shows you that in the kind of elite pro peloton there is still some of the some of the guys riding on on tie which was pretty cool this is a cool story but we we kind of phasing out rim brakes over the next year so we kind of i was hearing they're not going to be making rim brakes all manufacturers from 2020 i don't know if that's just an industry thing or yeah i think like for us carbon delamination is always an issue we've had a lot of riders that unfortunately the the carbon rim brakes do fail it's just that they're fundamental failing is heat and delaminations occurring obviously when it goes over like 220 degrees and then you have a separation of that resin really that bonds the fibers i mean carbon's incredibly strong and that's why we love working with it in wheels and in forks it's the same with my bike like i i rode that across australia and that was the first time i raced the indie pack this was um this is the bike i took and i even took etap across australia when it was first released did you when you had to charge it every sort of other day well every what was it 1200 you're not changing gear very often um and in the first when you're going across the desert you're pretty much staying in one gear so yeah i just charged it off a dynamo i had one one spare battery and i think i only charged them twice so yeah five and a half thousand k's she's she's still going she's done many great adventures together i remember elby and i both taking these bikes down the back of buffalo on the mountain bike kind of gravel tracks just showing how strong carbon is but also how comfortable titanium is and how resilient both are together so yeah all our bikes have got cool little stories um if they could talk they'd they'd never shut up really so quickly on that one of the things that i've sort of picked up with kerb i'm very much on the outer sanctum not on the inner sanctum but the inner sanctum with kerb is is very very strong and it's it's almost like a cult cult following i don't know if that's the right word but uh can you tell me a little bit about about the the custom about the cult the cult please tell me about the cult yeah well um what's that each night we pray we pray on a friday their shed beers we we just kind of really invested in is this what like this area is about people coming in yeah they just come out and i mean it's a bit of a mess because that Adam's kind of come back from race to the rock and we usually have friday night you know we clock off work in the in the australian tradition we clock off work a bit a bit a bit earlier kind of roll out a few eskies turn up the music have a bit of a a yarn as they say yeah um what's that i think we've got a barbecue out the front so we throw throw a few snags yeah on the barbecue yeah i'm from south african so i'm like they don't say that they're like yeah let's uh let's fire up the bribe we're going to eat some uh eat some meat but um before we wrap up so your bike that i'm about to take is there any last thing that i need to know about that before i take it off your hands for a week yeah not there's not a hell of a lot really to to be mindful of it's at the end of the day it's just it's just a bike you know go out and have some fun on it