A Brief History Of The Blacklist
A PASSION FOR ALL OF CYCLING
CHASING THE DREAM
Back in 2013 I was a scrappy road racer trying to make the pro dream happen. I was at the end of the window where a career in cycling is viable and had just finished college and taken on a full time gig in the environmental industry. For the next two years I battled with reality and chasing some unrealistic cycling dreams that were never going to surface. During that time I got hit with bad case of Lyme’s disease that nearly had me in a wheelchair at the end of each day before realizing what was going on. This dashed my pro cycling dream and left me with a big hole to fill until I had recovered.
STARTING AT ZERO
Mechanical things piqued my interests when I was younger to the point where I would rebuild my Dad’s weed wacker engine almost every weekend. This made tinkering with bike building an easy decision while recovering, but there were a few roadblocks: money was sparse, I had no welding or brazing experience, and no fabrication tools. After a few anxious weeks of avoiding financial commitment, I took a trip to Harbor Freight to buy files, a hack saw, and cheap vise. I ordered a scratch start DC only welder that was about as high tech as a potato, and decided to teach myself how to weld on the planned hack frame fixture. Quickly I found out TIG welding is no easy task, and it didn’t help that I bought Argon/CO2 instead of pure Argon. Luckily the frame fixture came together in a usable form.
A CRUDE PROCESS
I managed to successfully build a few frames in my hack fixture, but had to resort to some sketchy painting methods since I didn’t have access to a powder coater or paint shop. I had since moved out on my own into a very small 1800s cottage on a local farm with a dirt floor basement and root cellar. Conditions were less than ideal but it was all I could manage at the time. After cleaning out 100 years of trash, scrap appliances, and digging out the basement so I could stand up straight, I got to back to work. The root cellar was turned into a makeshift painting booth, and the 8ft x 5ft space into a very cramped workshop. It was enough to do the job.
A MAJOR LEAP
During my time at Penn State University I made friends with a lot of the older locals in the cycling scene. A couple of which had formerly worked at Grove Innovations back in the 80s & 90s. After Grove Innovations shut their doors, Bill gave away some of his original tooling; including this frame fixture for a 26” MTB frame. My buddy Tommy, who formerly welded and painted for Grove, had picked this up hoping to make frames of his own, but never got around to it. He was not only gracious enough to let me use this timeless piece of equipment, he also gave me some priceless welding tips that allowed me to progress to the next level. This was my first step in the journey of precision tooling.
NEW BEGINNINGS
In 2015 I was beat down, not making any financial progress, and in a slump. Out of the blue one day I received a call from an engineering company in State College, PA that was willing to hire me as their Production Manager on a referral from The Bicycle Shop, Inc. owner Erik. I took this as a sign it was time to change my career and learn as much as I could about product development, manufacturing, software development, and much more. I moved into Erik’s rental property and covertly setup a frame shop in the old shed out back. Once again conditions were not ideal, but it gave me an opportunity to continue building while learning how to design, machine, and fabricate in my new career.
FINDING MY STYLE
It was in that shed where all of the lines started to connect. I found out how to turn my work into an expression, tighten up quality, implement processes, and make a bike that rode well & was nice to look at. The Moonshine Jug head badge was a part of that era. This was a personal reflection of something that kept me busy during some low points in my past. I’ll just say, I had a degree in chemistry and liked to tinker.
FINALLY THERE
6 years after I picked up my first torch, I made the decision to officially start the business. In those 6 years I’ve had 3 career changes, moved 4 times, and bought a house. I found out having a stable location & workplace were the only two things standing in between me and Blacklist. Everything else fell into place over the next 2 years of running electric, scouring local ads for machining equipment, and setting up the shop as it now exists. My years in manufacturing at my day job had taught me everything I needed to know about process controls, documentation, quality control, and more. Every bike I build now is a deep effort to achieve perfection, make the process repeatable, and guarantee every frame will perform beyond expectations.
