Tony's Very Custom Holdsworth

It's a 1971 Holdsworth touring frame that I converted into a custom town bike, I took great liberties with my torch and added 25 additional braze ons!  Used your fenders and the Tourist bars as part of the build.

 

It's set up with a Sturmey RXRF 5speed internal hub, S.O.N front hub, Sun CR-18's laced with DT DB spokes for the wheels.  1950's Mafac brakes on Rene Herse posts and brass bushing kits being pulled with last generation Suntour XC pro levers.

 

I made the chainguard out of 7 pieces of sheet metal that came from the roof of a wrecked 1965 Nova station wagon! It's all fillet brazed together and looks like one piece now.

 

It's painted with PPG Omni 2k urethane, I did the paint. I sandblasted the center of your fenders, laid down an epoxy primer and the gray paint. I did the back of the rear fender white just like all of the old British bikes did and ran a fine red pinstripe to separate the paint from the stainless edges. My prior bike was a nice 531 framed race bike set up as a townie, it was deliberately drab on purpose, I wanted this bike to show off what I do and for me to enjoy until I'm too old to get my leg over it! 

 

I'm turning 66 in 2 weeks, been in the bike business as a mechanic since 1976, owned 3 stores at times, worked at others.  About 12 years ago I burned out on the modern retail bike scene, it's not what I like and I don't like where it's going. My passion throughout my career has always been transportation bikes, real bikes that can take you to work and the store for decades, not throw away expensive toys like the mountain bike scene has evolved to. I now have a very well set up shop at home, I can do all aspects of steel frame work and repair, I have an Anvil frame jig and NECA frame table, I do high level wheel building (former race team mechanic in a past life, was building wheels for Jonathan Boyer in the early 80's for his Coors and TDF events).

I do restorations and custom town bikes now and only build stuff that I want to, not interested in messing with the new stuff, it keeps me busy and I get to play with cool bikes and make people smile with the creations I come up with for them, I like my job!

Thanks for putting on this event, already some fun bikes on it!