Rothair

The Art of Framebuilding

By James Robertson

December 4^th, 2022

I am chatting to Matt as he fits the bridge and bosses on the steel frame he is currently building. He had the Rothair head badge made and took on this workshop in 2017 after attending the Bicycle Academy. Since then he has worked as a fabricator at Shand Cycles for several years - where I first met him - building hundreds of frames, experience he is now bringing back to his own frames.

He tells me he likes the idea of custom bicycles, matching the bike to a person and personality. Initially, he thought this would be focussed on an older style of bicycle, touring bikes, with rim brakes and nice lugs. However, more and more he finds himself being approached to build more modern bikes.

He doesn’t seem to mind either way, “I will make anything, I love all bikes” he tells me going on to point to the cargobike in the corner of his workshop and the truss fork bike on the other side, whilst also mentioning a minivelo and a set of cargo forks he has built too.

It is clear he sees bicycles as very personal objects, one that the owner can have a strong, almost intimate relationship with where thousands of miles have been traveled together and it is his job to make that object as beautiful as possible.

While this is currently just me annoying the people I know making frames, I am hoping it will develop into something more and while I doubt it will ever become an exhaustive document of Scottish bike builders it will hopefully provide a snapshot of some of the current work being created.