WELD ONE BIKES
Weld One is a small custom bike frame builder situated in a historic town of Kyoto, Japan. Weld One specializes in fabricating custom titanium bike frames including mountain, road, and mini-velo frames under "Ogre" brand. Weld One is run by Mr. Eiji Konishi, who is one of the top-ranking metal fabricators in Japan.
I took a visit to this shop in January 2013, had a good discussion with Mr. Konishi, and was so impressed about Weld One's technology and craftsmanship, that I just had to write about this master fabricator. This guy is a genius, and I would like to proliferate his fabulous titanium frames to the world!
Although agreed and accepted by Weld One to write about the company and its products on my personal web site, this is not an official web site for Weld-One. Please visit following URL for the official Weld-One web site: http://www.weld-one.com/
Please take a look at this video I took during my visit to the shop on January 3, 2013.
WHAT DOES WELD ONE MAKE?
100% custom bike frames:
- provide Weld One with your desired spec/geometry, then he will build you a dream titanium frame.
Notwithstanding the above, he does have some STANDARD FRAMES as follow:
Mountain Cross Country Race (29er and 26in available):
weight: 1590grams (3.498lb)
price: 420,000 Japanese Yen (US$4,468 as of currency rate on 2/24/2013)
29er geometry (with 100mm forks, BB drop is 65mm):
All-Mountain 29er (currently under development)
- 68.5degree head angle, 70mm drop, 3.9lb with 120mm forks.
price: 420,000 Japanese Yen (US$4,468 as of currency rate on 2/24/2013)
Roadie (competition):
weight: 1,490grams (3.278lb)
price: 399,000 Japanese Yen (US$4,244 as of currency rate on 2/24/2013)
*price includes carbon fiber forks
frame geometry:
Mini Velo:
WHAT IS SO SPECIAL ABOUT WELD ONE FRAMES?
64 titanium is used throughout. Fabricating this specially tough kind of titanium tubes requires lots of skills. Most fabricators scare away from dealing with such 64 titanium and choose to use easier but weaker type of titanium tubes.
Grade 9, Ti-3Al-2.5V titanium tubes used on all sections of the frame except for the head and bottom bracket. 3% aluminum, 2.5% vanadium, the best kind of titanium tubes we can think of that canbe used to make bike frames.
Head and bottom brackets are spceficifically milled from a solid, Grade 5, TI-6AL-4V titanium billet block. Never heard of anyone who makes it out of a block of titanium. All other manufactures make head and bb from commercially available titanium tubes. Not all fabricators can make head and bb from a solid titanium block. Very difficult to fabricate, but once welded into a frame these solid head and BB are three times stronger than the ones that are made from titanium tubes.
Special weld wires/rods which have relatively higher aluminum and vanadium content are used. These are harder to fabricate but much tougher when built. Please see the video below for a difference between these special weld rods and most common rods used in fabricating titanium tubes. These special rods are much tougher than regular rods but requires special skills of a fabricator to handle.
Pie-cut and welded sections: highly labor intensive, but makes the original titanium tubes even tougher and stronger.
Pie-cut weld sections are not only welded from out side, but special treated from inside the tubes as well.
Custom taylored tapered (please look closely) titanium tubes.
replaceable rear deraillure hanger/drop out for 9mm quick releases
sand blasted logos
WHAT OPTIONS ARE AVAILABLE?
- fully custom frame taylored for your specific need
- tapered head tube
- sliding dropouts (for a single speed use)
- custom sand blasted logos
- super light weight or heavy duty version
- drop outs for 142 mm x 12mm rear hub
- any seat post, BB sizes
WHO FABRICATES WELD ONE FRAMES?
Although the bike frame he makes speaks for itself, for more than 20 years, Mr. Konishi has been fabricating metals since teenage years and is now one of the best metal fabricators in Japan, and here is a proof.
Below is a list of top ranking ranking contenders for Japan's national welding contest for 2012.
http://www.jwes.or.jp/competition2012a.pdf
In the fourth column, you will see "小西栄二" which means "Eiji Konishi" in Japanese. This means that Mr. Konishi has ranked fourth place in all of Japan for 2012 . He has entered this annual contest for more than a decade and consistently ranked in the top five. For your information, this contest is run by Japan's most prestigious organization for metal fabricating engineers.
In addition, so as to save Mr. Konishi's face for not being able to take the First prize in the contest, he has an unfair disadvantage amongst all other contenders. If you can read Japanese, the list above shows the companies the contenders work for. All of them but Mr. Konishi are employees of big companies such as Toyota, Hitachi, Mazda, Kawasaki, and Mitsubishi. Aside from making preparations for the contest, Mr. Konishi has a daily chore of fabricating bike frames for us cyclists. On the other hand, just about all other contenders are hired full time to win this contest. Which means that, just like how the corporate sponsored Olympic players are, their only work throughout the year, is to prepare to win the contest. Mr. Konishi is the only privateer in the contest which makes it such a BIG DEAL that he has been able to always rank top five in this annual event.
Hard to believe, but this is the shop where Mr. Konishi fabricates all the bike frames. The shop is about the size of an average American kitchen! The shop is located in a tiny corner of a huge lot where Mr. Konishi's family runs a business of manufacturing Japanese traditional artifacts for more than 100 years.
HOW TO PURCHASE WELD ONE BIKE FRAMES
Every Weld One frame is built to order. Standard frame or a cusom made, current lead time as of this 1st week of January, 2013 is four months. You can purchase it direct from Weld One's official web page:
HOWEVER, Mr. Konishi has admitted to me that he is not very confident with his English skill. So if you need any help with the language, I will be more than happy to help you. I have been in the business of import/export of high performance products including automotive and marine since 1994. So I should know more about secure logistics and payment methods than a master fabricator. Please feel free to contact me at hch00477@nifty.com or phone: (your international access code) - 81- 90 - 9844 - three-seven-six-two. Any questions, please let me know.
Lastly, thanks for visiting my web site. Im not a novel writer and I know my sentences are lousy and hard to read, but I hope I was able to illustrate the greatness of this master fabricator from a small town in Japan. Since 1994, I have introduced to Japanese market a lot of high performance boats and parts that are proudly made in the United States. It is my turn now to introduce some of the great products that are made in Japan to the world. Again, I will be more than happy to assist you should you have any questions or if you are interested in having Mr. Konishi custom make your dream bike.
Thanks and regards,
Hiro from Sanada Racing, Japan