On Tuesday 24th March 2020, following advice from the Government we closed the workshop for initially 3 weeks to keep our team safe and to help halt the spread of the virus. It goes without saying that we all hope to be back at the workshop very soon, but in the meantime due to the…
Author: Alt Design
New Superlight
One of our popular ‘vintage’ frames has made a come back this year. The Superlight frame was introduced in the early 1960’s with any excess metal cut away from the lugs to remove weight. The C1960 Mercian catalogue reads – For Time Trials with bell, brake and silk 1’s, 17 lb. 9 ozs. A prophecy…
The Rough-Stuff Fellowship Archive
We’ve had our copy of The Rough-Stuff Fellowship Archive book for a few months now, we bought it in Hardback through the Kickstarter Campaign and the book is currently on it’s second print run with a paperback option and it really is a great publication. The pictures in the book are stunning, including a couple…
High Sheriff charity bike ride for Foundation Derbyshire – UPDATED
AN UPDATE TO THE STORY BELOW – SADLY DUE TO CORONAVIRUS, THE CHARITY RIDE HAS BEEN POSTPONED. WE WILL KEEP YOU UPDATED WITH NEWS WHEN WE HAVE IT ———————————– On Sunday 22 March, 2020, the High Sheriff of Derbyshire, Lord Burlington, will be undertaking an epic 208 mile cycle ride around Derbyshire’s county boundary, to raise…
Surface Improver on renovations
Over the years we’ve tried many ways of filling pitting, the only permanent solution is replacement of tubes or filling with brass or silver, but this is time consuming and therefore can be costly (and excess heat to the middle thin part of the tubes – isn’t recommended). We fill dents with brass and silver…
Mercian 753 ‘Mondrian’ track frame
This month Mark and Rob in the sprayshop took a new Reynolds 753 track frame and got creative with it. Mark’s inspiration for this unique frame came from the Dutch artist Mondrian and the geometric bold colours of his paintings. The one-off design has been painted with an airbrush using our usual Stove Enamel…
Rare 1951 Super Bi Laminated Mercian
We were pleased to hear from a customer about renovating a rare 1951 Super Bi Laminated Mercian, a frame that no one here at the workshop had ever seen in the flesh (and we’ve got a total of over 130 Mercian years between us all). Bi-laminated lugs are created by the frame builders, the frame…
John’s Raleigh Flyer Renovations
We recently renovated a couple of Raleigh Flyers for John, who worked with a subcontracted company at Raleigh in the late 1970’s in their paint division. Raleigh were developing powder coating as a new technology brought over from the US and fine tuning it to suit their production. John had been looking for a Raleigh Flyer…
Dario’s King of Mercia
Only a few details send in with these photographs Campagnolo Chorus 8sp, TA compact crankset and Carradice Bags….sun is shining But I’m sure you like the bike as well as us.
1952 Whitemeadows Mercian
We Instagramed a picture of this 1952 Mercian bike, which was bought NEW from the original Mercian shop, a Whitemeadows Mercian frame. The original owner, Alan Gifford, decided recently to part with his dearly loved Mercian and found it a new owner who would look after it, as he had for the past 67 years….
Super nice Superlight
We recently had a 1960 Mercian Superlight to renovate for Tom. The frame was in a little bit of a state, with surface rust and a badly done repair to the seat lug done somewhere / sometime, score marks on the track dropouts (plus any frame with chrome is generally worse for wear than a…
‘new’ early 3D Gothic transfers
We recently had a 1960 Superlight for renovation for a customer, Tom, who was keen to have a very early 3D style Gothic transfer recreated that he’d found on various sites whilst researching early Mercians and their transfers. The problem with recreating old transfers is the drawing / copying of them, it takes hours and…