MTB
Installment three of Industry Insider sees us meet Dave Mercer of Mercer Bikes.
Dave Mercer has been in love with bicycles his entire life. “It started with BMX during the 80’s and when I turned 13 in 1991 my parents gave me my first mountain bike,” says the man from Mercer Bikes. “It was a heavy hi-tensile steel bike but it blew open the doors of my mind. Wheels and dirt became my everything.”
“At the time, the MTB industry was beginning to shift most production to the far east but there were still a few die hard companies and builders who refused to outsource production. The most renegade of the lot, though, were the individual frame builders such as De Kerf, Roberts, Dave Yates and Brodie. That these men fashioned their own frames, often in little more than a kitted-out garage. It was so gritty and ‘real’ - I knew that I wanted a part of that. It just seemed a very far-fetched idea.”
After school Mercer went to study Veterinary Science at Onderstepoort and spent his free time exploring and riding as much as he could. With his qualification completed he moved down to Cape Town to take up an after-hours position at an emergency clinic. A decade later, disillusioned with clinical work that far-fetched idea kept resurfacing.
“Initially I confined my efforts to making racks, truing stands and a few laptop stands, but as my confidence grew I realised that frame-building may not be as unattainable as I’d thought. I scoured the internet and lurked on forums absorbing as much as I could and at the beginning of 2013 I built my first complete frame,” he says.
In April 2014 with 10 frames under his belt he attended ‘Bespoked' the UK Handbuilt Bicycle Show as a new builder. Mercer Bikes had officially launched.
Today he still works an after-hours shift at a local veterinary clinic one week per month, while the rest of his time is dedicated to the workshop - the two rooms of which house a storage and assembly area and the workshop proper.
“Most of the production is done entirely by hand although I have some machines to help me – I’d be lost without my lathe. An angle grinder and power file also help to speed things up,” he says.
Two days a week, Rolf Niemayer assists in the workshop. He does a lot of mitreing, prepping and cleaning and between the two they manage to build two to three frames a month.
The focus at Mercer Bikes is on building bespoke, custom framesets and complete bicycles. These bikes often include custom built racks and stems.
“Every build begins with a conversation between me and the customer,” Mercer explains. “I try to decide exactly what it is that the customer needs and wants from their new custom bicycle. I get a complete set of body measurements including inseam length, torso, height, reach etc; and use these measurements to design a frameset to fit the rider. There are no set sizes or configurations when it comes to custom bikes,” he says.
According to Mercer, the bike’s intended use, the rider’s riding style and weight as well as their expectations of ride feel will all play a role in deciding the tubing diameters and wall thicknesses of the frame tubes.
“Larger diameters and thicker walls will increase stiffness but sometimes at the expense of comfort. Skinnier tubes may be more comfortable but will flex more. Balancing these qualities and matching them to a rider is as much an art as a science and I’m constantly learning.”
Mercer designs his frames on RattleCad, an open-source software. Once the proposed design has been signed off by the customer he’s ready to start.
From there it is an intricate process of mitreing, cutting, alignment and brazing - all explained in more detail in the link below:
I love the feel of steel under my fingers, the smell of it on my skin, the way it sings when tapped and the resonance you feel through a high quality, thin-walled tube. I love the heat of the torch and the heft of a long round file.
So what does the future hold for Mercer Bikes? “A little bit of expansion,” says Mercer. “My current workshop is small and there’s not much room for to add anything extra. I’d love to get a milling machine and to mechanise some of the tube mitreing to help speed up the process. A spraybooth would also be a lovely addition. Once my kids are a little older I will probably move the workshop into a small industrial unit – I may take on extra staff, so many ifs. I’d love to add a few more ‘stock’ frame options. Currently there’s the Hungry Monkey which is a long travel 650B hardtail. I can definitely see a niche for a playful marathon style 29er as well as a CX tourer and a road bike,” he says.
"Designing, building and testing these things takes time and so this is very much a long term endeavour," says Mercer. "I don’t ever want Mercer Bikes to grow so large that I end up becoming a manager of a team of workers. I love that after a hard day at the bench you have made something that wasn’t there before. I don’t want to lose that."
