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Pedersen Workshop
Pedersen riders are often personalities, who like to give their bikes a special note trough equipment and accessories.
Who is taking a look at the beautiful bikes on a Pedersen convention, will notice: no bike is like another.
Who is dreaming of even more individuality, can now even concept his own frame and his own bike concept on a Kemper Pedersen Workshop. Arie, one of the first participants, is telling how that is working: In the beginning of April 2016 Michael organized the first workshop. The first participants were the author Arie and the Pedersen Genootschap Webmaster Peter.
On the first day we get told basics about the Pedersen bike, its history and development, the different geometries and remarks. Then the first decision needs to be made: which bike/ which frame model do we want to build?
We both want a puristic bike with Cowhorn handlebar. Peter’s one with 28” wheels and mine with 26” wheels. Furthermore, it was important to include the originally woven seat in the geometric. Michael made sketches and schemes, under which we work. Now we get allocated to a workbench and the appropriate frame template. Herein the tube sets, that we will manufacture, will find their place. But at first, we get trial lengths of pipe, to acquaint ourselves with the treatment of the material.
On the second day, the tube set gets manufactured. Basically, every tube needs to be treated. We serrate and degrease, we squeeze tubes oval and adjust the dropouts. We file radii diligently and adjust all tubes in tight tolerances, until they suffice Michael’s critical look.
At the end of the day, after trial and error and filing and measuring and filing and trial and error, the Pedersen frame actually stands in the template. Everything gets soldered together now in high quality – by Michael himself – the Pedersen maker. The brazing of the frame requires a lot of training and routine. It is an art, which is not easily learned in a couple of days.
On the third day the fork gets build and the frame gets milled. After levelling the frame and fork precisely, the Cowhorn handlebar gets soldered into the fork. We are finishing our frames with file and emery cloth, so they can get coated later. Finally, we proudly engrave the frame number and our initials in the bottom brackets.
At the end of the day Peter and me head home, tired but very confident.
After discussing the final equipment and colors we leave our frames with Michael.
By the way, from time to time we interrupt our hard work for coffee, cake and lunch in the garden. In the evening we dream up about our bicycles over a beer in the country hotel, where we are staying.
In my head my bike has been undergoing all kinds of changes in the last days: from unpainted raw metal over dull nickel-plated to the ultimate coloring – two green shades. Therefor certainly the seat tubes needed to be featured and soldered removable….
Peter settles for orange with anthracite.
After a few weeks Michael rings: “The bikes are done!”
We head to Germany again to pick up our bicycles.
Looking at both Pedersen pieces of art, we are as proud as Punch.
Despite the many similarities, our bikes have a very different vibe. On the one hand because of the wheel size and especially because of the color.
Then we’re making a test run. We are amazed, that the bikes feel so familiar, as if we didn’t ride anything else in the past years.
