MADE Show: It Doesn’t Get More Portland Than a Fillet Brazed Ira Ryan Bike

The MADE Bike Show is a showcase of handmade bicycles. Nothing about that means the bikes featured have to follow any particular theme and yet many of them seem to coalesce around off-road riding. This Ira Ryan bike bucks that trend as well as any other modern trend instead following the classic sensibility of a steel bike but with a slight twist.

The classic lines are all there. The lightness, the airiness, everything you love about a steel bike as you imagine what it once was. Then the twist is that with all that call to the classic highlights, it’s thoroughly and effortlessly modern.

The frame starts with details you won’t notice. You can’t see in the pictures and you can almost miss it even in person. It’s the kind of thing that’s there if you know yet disappears if you don’t. What I mean is that the top tube and downtube aren’t just any steel.

There’s new old stock True Temper OX tubing used in the top tube and downtube. You can’t buy it anymore but it’s prized for framebuilding because it’s shockingly light while also resisting fatigue when heated. This is forever steel while also being unobtanium.

This magic steel is also not round. Further balancing weight and stiffness the top tube is tapered while the downtube is bi-oval. There’s performance benefit, already mentioned, to both but there’s also an aesthetic quality that helps keep the eye moving with a flow from one place to the next.

Ultimately, that’s what an Ira Ryan bike is all about. The head badge is a barn swallow and, if you give him the opportunity, Ryan will talk your ear off about days training as a youth while watching the flow of swallows in the air. His bikes, this one included, are specifically designed to flow in a way that gives the rider that same fluid feeling of movement. Which is then visually represented in the tube shapes. It’s a beautiful thing to ponder.

Fortunately that classic steel feel and look doesn’t come with the mechanical components of years past. Ryan’s bikes use modern details and the groupset here is SRAM RED AXS levers and brakes paired with SRAM Force front and rear derailleurs. The saddle is a Specialized S-Works Power Evo 3D printed piece and it sits atop an Enve carbon seatpost. At the front of the bike is an Enve carbon road stem and an Enve carbon AR bar.

The wheel package starts with another Portland local company. Both front and rear are Hifi carbon wheels with a 38mm depth and shod with, tan wall of course, Vittoria Corsa Pro tires.

For the final details things start with a classic callback in the paint. Inside it looks black but if you can get it in just the right lighting you’ll find a deep forest green applied by Colorworks and based on the Steve McQueen classic Bullitt Mustang. To really set that paint off there’s chrome highlights from Wolftooth and Chris King Ti bottle cages with matching titanium Bivo water bottles inside.

Ira Ryan bikes purchase information

As with most of what’s shown at the MADE bike show, Ira Ryan is not a huge company but rather a small one man shop who will happily share a tomato from the garden during a consult.

This Ira Ryan bike is a race oriented road bike called the RD-D Fillet. Pricing for something like it will run you around $12,800 and you can find more information at the Ira Ryan Cycles website.

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