Sure, some handbuilt ideas are a bit crackpot and not everyone will choose a keen-as-mustard one-man band over a big brand’s experience and design-by-committee evolved creations. But for soul in your steel and love in your lugs, there are some truly beautiful bikes to drool over at Bespoked.

Part 3 of our daily dive into the best mountain bike creations we saw at this year’s Bespoked handbuilt bike show…

Cables-into-the-stem isn’t just for the big brands

Quirk Cycles Superchub

Rob Quirk has been building award-winning mountain and gravel bikes in East London for five years. His elegant signature models share minimal, clean-lined shapes and are often born from his experiences tackling ultra-distance adventures and races around the globe.

Super clean clamping

The frame of the Quirk Bikes Superchub uses Columbus steel tubing, but with such smooth shapes and angles, you’d almost be forgiven for thinking it was carbon fibre. Key to the less-is-more aesthetic is a fully internal cable routing through the stem facia and into a custom-machined 56mm headtube spinning on a one-off FSA headset. More tidy details include an 3D-printed seat clamp cluster hiding the tensioning seatpost wedge inside the top tube, and tiny (also additive-printed) steel dropouts incorporating post mount brake bosses that blend seamlessly into skinny stays. Both save weight, but also distribute stresses better by forming a continuous skin between tube and dropout. The Superchub should be way easier to clean once it gets muddy too – handy for an UK-made MTB.

Columbus tubing

Quirk goes the extra mile on final finish by custom anodizing alloy components in-house like the GX Eagle cranks and mech, brakes levers, cassette and chainring. Rob might have designed the Quirk Cycles Superchub frame for a specific event, but for the rest of us, the result is a fast moving, sleek and efficient XC hardtail with no fussy components and a beautiful silhouette.