Richard Sachs has been building bicycles for over four decades. Each of his hand-built machines is a living, breathing and moving sculpture of speed and balance. Dimensions are more descriptive than technical; time is measured in file strokes; bends are aligned visually and calibrated with muscle memory; radiant heat on a cheek sets the brazing temperature; and alignment is part mechanical, part alchemy and mostly experience. A visitor to his workshop watches and searches for clues or sleights of hand, but there are no magic tricks, special tools, machines or complex apparatus. Richard is the machine, and he is a one-man industrial revolution. He never makes the same bicycle twice, because every bicycle he makes contains the knowledge and experience that will form the next one.

Among all of the cutting, fluxing, brazing, filing, bending and learning is racing. Every fall, Richard and a few other carefully-chosen like-minded people suit up for cyclocross season, sharing mud, sweat, blood and tears on bicycles that he built specifically to be a natural appendage of each rider—a blend of steel, aluminum, carbon fiber, air and rubber that meshes naturally with muscle, bone, heart and soul. They are designed to be respected, ridden hard, abused, cleaned, tuned, lubed, then abused again for the next race, the next day and the next week. And maybe even the next decade.

Five years ago, Richard asked us to redesign his visual program. Since then, we’ve been proud be part of the machine, and part of the revolution that happens every time he makes a new bicycle.

Photos by Carlos Alejandro