With a birthday on the cards, frame builder Ollie knew he needed to pull out the stops and realise his dream of building his daughter a bike.
Here’s the story of how it happened.
Framebuilding: Ollie Martin
Photos, video, words: Jamie Edwards
With thanks to Kids Ride Shotgun
Starling’s frame builder Ollie has been looking forward to this one since his daughter Bea was born.
He knew he wanted to build her a bike and he really wanted it to be made at Starling with the same tools and tubes he makes grown-up bikes with.
And just like Starling’s big bikes, he wanted it to be made with steel so that it would be tough, repairable and would last for years. And he wanted to include a few nods to the design of the adult bikes, just for a bit of fun.
So with Bea’s second birthday coming up Ollie got on the tools and started making a balance bike worthy of a frame builder’s kid.
The first challenge was to get the basic shape down on paper.
He worked out the angles, drew it all up on a plan and used that to create some tooling.
Next, he had to work out where the various components would come from. There’s no point sticking adult stuff on a kid’s bike and making it uncomfortable and hard to ride.
We got in touch with the legends at Kids Ride Shotgun, and pitched them the idea of a collab. They were stoked.
Before we knew it, Kids Ride Shotgun had sent us a full balance bike to use for the project. That gave us a frame for inspiration and a whole heap of components to build with – including a fork, handlebar, stem, saddle, grips, wheels, tyres and a Magura hydraulic disk brake.
All that was left was to get building.
Oli mitred the tubes, tacked up the frame and got brazing. He built it using Reynolds 853 tubing, exactly the same stuff we use to make Starling’s adult-sized bikes.
Compared to making big bikes it was a real challenge. This was the first balance bike Ollie has built, meaning everything had to be designed and built from scratch. There were no plans to follow for the design and no tooling or jigs to help during the build. And unlike those adult bikes, everything is really small and compact, meaning space to work is limited.
That’s all before you add in the pressure of it being a present for his daughter and the deadline of a birthday!
And after a couple of weeks of overtime, working around the day job, Ollie got Bea’s balance bike built.
The end result is SO COOL.
It has a cool purple paint job on the fork, chosen because Ollie thinks Bea will love it. And it has loads of legit Kids Ride Shotgun parts, all designed to perfectly suit little shredders. The Magura hydraulic disk brake is awesome, it has a really short lever reach and a super light pull – perfect to keep Bea safe.
The frame also has some nice details, including a tubular chainstay yoke to match Starling’s big bikes, a dropper port badge with “Bea’s Bike” punched into it, and a Starling headtube badge. And Ollie kept it raw, just cos he thinks it looks great. Because of the obvious rust vs steel bikes issue, we rarely see raw Starling frames. This was a rare chance to make that happen and see those tubes and brazing out in the open.
You’ll probably wonder about weight. Whilst we always argue that bike weight doesn’t matter too much (backed-up by Pinkbike’s recent Mini Murmur review), Ollie was careful to keep the bike manageable for little Bea. He built it to be tough enough to razz around the park but still light enough that she can grab-and-go without any hassle.
We showed it off for the first time at the Malverns festival, and then Ollie took a week off for the big second birthday celebrations. Happy birthday, Bea!
And thanks again to Kids Ride Shotgun for their help.
