NAHBS 2012: Appleman Bicycles’ Carbon Cyclocross Bike

NAHBS 2012 may have come and gone, but we’ve got a ton of profiles of handmade cyclocross bikes and builders from NAHBS still to come. Check back often for more eye candy and new cyclocross products, and view our recent NAHBS 2012 cyclocross coverage.

by Clifford Lee

Matt Appleman from Minneapolis has been building bikes for four years, strictly with carbon.  He has a degree in composite engineering and has worked with carbon fiber composites in the aerospace industry for years before turning to bicycle frame building as a one-man custom shop to follow his passion for bicycles (he has been racing road and track since he was 12 years old).

His show bike was his personal machine: a versatile cyclocross creation with mechanical disc brakes and internal cable routing for the brake and shift systems with a raw carbon finish and a neat, textured cut-out graphic applied directly to the raw tubes. Appleman uses custom tube layup for every customer based on application, customer weight, and desired ride quality, all made to order by Enve composites for Matt, and then assembles the frame via tube-to-tube construction.

He likes to offer unique finishing touches such as surface texture, and a custom bonded Enve bar/stem combination, and a unique seat stay bridge. What makes that bridge unique? If you look carefully, it exactly matches the chevron shape found on a Challenge Grifo.  That’s a neat, thoughtful touch.

Appleman Bicycles’ Carbon Cyclocross Bike Photo Gallery:

View our other cyclocross bike and builder profiles from NAHBS 2012.