Amid our ongoing coverage of the Bespoked Dresden framebuilder and maker showcase, today we are featuring a very special bicycle made by Berlin-based Fern Bicycles equipped with Allygn racks and custom bags from Gramm Tourpacking. With design language referencing a late-1980s Toyota Pickup and mountain bikes of the same vintage, the build features both old and new elements with components from a long list of artisan fabricators like Cyber Cycles, Garbaruk, Tune, Velocity, SON, Gevenalle, Btchn’, and many more. We think this bike might be peak Fern. Continue reading below for the complete breakdown of this special Fern Bicycles Chuck gravel touring bike.
If you’re at Bespoked this weekend, make sure to swing by the Fern booth to check this out!
We’d like to thank ERGON for sponsoring our Bespoked Dresden coverage. Lots of us over here at The Radavist ride Ergon’s grips and saddles. We’re honored to have our hard work supported by such a great company.
One year ago this week, I arrived in Berlin en route to Dresden for the inaugural Bespoked Germany bicycle show. Eager to check out the Berlin bicycling culture, Florian and Kristin (Tine), of Fern Bicleles and Gramm Tourpacking, respectively, were my tour guides for the days I was in town.
We packed a lot into our time, getting to know quite a few of the talented artisans who play an essential role in making the eastern Germany hub what it is. Most of all, Flo and Tine allowed me to use their workshop as a home base from which to work. And I felt plenty of inspiration working amongst the Ferns.
Fern Bicycles
Florian has made a name for himself, building custom bikes that seamlessly combine modern and vintage elements into a uniquely Fern palette. The Fern brand, which means “far away” in German, began following some long tours Flo did in remote parts of the world. Those outings, which occurred nearly twenty years ago, still inspire and inform his work. Back then, he was riding 26-inch MTBs converted with dropbars and racks.
Of course, Flo will create an occasional track bike or flat-bar porteur, but most Ferns are made for no-nonsense touring or loaded racing, on and off-road, from rando to gravel. Drop bar builds are predominant, featuring painstakingly balanced portions, cleverly integrated lighting, and racks from Flo’s production brand Allygn with equally congruent Gramm bags.
Many of these bikes use carbon forks and even electronic shifting per customer preference, but my personal favorites are all metal, with V-brakes, room for wide tires, and good ‘ol indexed or friction shifting.
As we see nearly every day in the media, including the pages of this very website, the cycling industry is driven by constant innovation. That drive to create and improve has no doubt yielded some incredible products yet, for many applications, uber advanced technology is not necessary.
Builders like Flo, who continue to incorporate components and standards left behind years ago by most major brands, will always be alluring and refreshing to see.
With the conclusion of last year’s Bespoked, where Flo and Tine displayed a couple of really incredible projects, including the Ultra Rando with neon fade Soft Touch finish, he decided to take some time and focus on honing his TIG welding skillset.
Fern Bicycles Chuck
During his decade-plus career of frame building, Flo always brazed frames. However, as I mentioned last year in my overview of the Allygn “Beast of the East” prototype, welding can have an efficiency advantage over brazing after a bit of a learning curve. Welding will be necessary to keep up with demand and potentially make frames in stock sizing rather than only custom.
Flo asked me to join him in this adventure, offering me one of his subsequent commissions – a show bike for this year’s Bespoked. The rest, as they say, is history, and today, you’re looking at a deep-custom Fern Chuck gravel touring bike.
The Fern Bicycles Chuck is the builder’s most off-road-oriented bike. While every Fern is custom, many fit into one of three categories: Chacha (26-inch tourer), Chico (lighter race-worthy rando), and Chuck (heavy-duty on/off-road touring and gravel).
What’s a Chuck?
Sometimes, categorizing a bike is not easy. But people like to put things in boxes, so it is a task we must do. At first glance, this Fern Bicycles Chuck looks like a fat tire gravel bike. But just because it has wide knobby tires and drop bars doesn’t automatically make it so. A traditional 72.5° head tube angle with an almost identical seat angle of 73°, 440 mm chainstays, nearly flat top tube, 53.5 mm fork rake, low bottom bracket, etc, push it more into the modern randonneuring and touring categories, and away from the “adventure”-oriented gravel bikes predominantly featured on this site.
The Chuck gets its name from Chuck Norris, which is illustrated with the six-finger fist seat tube logo.
I plan to write more about this bike later this winter after I put some mileage on it. But I think it’s important to point out that the Fern tubing meddly has been refined over the years to offer a spirited yet durable ride quality. Lots of framebuilders talk about their tubing selections and custom butting profiles for good reason, as it’s a massive part of buying a custom bike.
Named after his pup Acid, the “Acido” tubing selection is Colombus Spirit with custom-shaped Zona chain and seat stays. The custom stays allow wide tire fitment without the use of any special yokes while retaining a narrow Q-factor.
Design
Since the overall goal of this project was to build a complete bike that used reliable, tried-and-true components—like external cable routing, analog shifting, a metal fork, rim brakes, and QR axles—reciprocal design reference was imperative.
From the earliest conversations and drawings, this bike conjured parallels to my 1988 Toyota pickup and I knew what it would look like from the very beginning. Since I already spun a few paragraphs about why I love that truck and functionally simple bikes like my Alumalith and this Chuck, I’ll save space here. But beautiful and pragmatic vehicles will always be appealing and fun to me over their more complicated alternatives. And that essence makes me want to get out and ride more because it’s plain fun. And that’s the point, right?
Thanks to Flo’s drafting talent and the artistry of fabricator and finisher Jacek Orłowski nearby in Poland, the striping and color on this Chuck is an incredible reference to another object that brings me a lot of joy.
Oh, and that SON light cover? Flo couldn’t resist adding even more details to this project and found a lid from a pot of face cream that fits perfectly over the light. He then designed a logo and printed custom decals. My jaw is still on the floor.
Cyber Cycles Cross Blade Fork
The design for this Fern Chuck began with a few essential considerations, inspirations, and collaborations. First, Flo wanted to incorporate the new Cross Blade from fellow German fabricators Cyber Cycles. They had just released the rim brake version of this classic Switchblade-inspired fork, which features a CNC aluminum crown sandwiching the 1⅛” steerer and titanium blades with adjustable cantilever mounts.
While the titanium blades will theoretically flex more than that of steel alternatives like Ron used with the Alumalith’s fork, they are primarily geared toward vintage MTB use rather than gravel bikes, so Flo requested particular legs that had more taper than spec. Further custom alterations give it a 410 mm axle-to-crown length along with a specifically machined crown for about 53.5 mm rake rather than the 45 mm that would typically be standard. Fellow Berliner Dan Pleikies of Wheeldan was enlisted to install custom rack mounts in the titanium blades so the bike could be fully equipped with Allygn Micro Pannier racks and bags.
Lighting
Other custom modifications were made to the fork to route the front dynamo light wiring. Flo fabricated a special retention ring placed at the bottom of the steerer tube, resting inside the fork crown. This helps direct the cable out of the fork blade interior after it exits the crown’s machined cavity.
Speaking of lighting, since Flo is German and well-versed in making efficient randonneuring bikes, he’s savvy in designing functional power systems for generating lumens from the front SON dynamo hub. In order to easily remove the fork from the frame, Flo installed a 3.5 mm port in the downtube that the front wiring taps into. A cable then travels in the downtube, through the bottom bracket, and into the rear chainstay where it connects to the rear light.
Allygn Racks and Gramm Tourpacking Bags
The racks for this Fern Bicycles Chuck come from Flo’s rack brand, Allygn. The front Diamond Rack is made to fit both sizes of Diamond bags from Gramm Tourbacking and other Rando bags. The rack stays were bent to fit the boss-mounted V-brakes but would normally attach to the sides of the fork blades.
Similarly, both the front and rear pannier racks are designed to work with Gramm Tourpacking’s Micro Pannier bags. The front ones can be purchased with bags, but as of now, the rears are only available with Fern frames. The Micro Pannier bags are super simple to use, as they mount with three magnetic fasteners and a plunger-style single quick release that’s typically found in marine applications.
The Framebag is attached to the inner main triangle with the same quick-release fasteners as the Micro Panniers. This was Tine’s first time building a bag this way, but it looks super clean and is very easy to use. The fabric was a limited X-Pac that has been very difficult to source in Germany. It’s lightweight with an inner waterproof membrane, so these bags should be durable and practical for years to come.
But that’s not all… Another Fern Bicycles Chuck!
Not one to make things easy on himself, Florian made other Chucks while mine was in process. This included one for himself. Most build decisions are similar to my bike, including Cross Blade, V-brakes, SON light cover, etc. But his was inspired by another famous bicycle…
The YO FERNY looks familiar, eh?
You can tell that Flo and Tine also had fun designing the bags for this wild build. The framebag references 90s-era portage straps and the saddle tool bad is a new offering they hope to bring to market soon. Hopefully they make more with the YO FERNY logo!
Massive thanks to Flo and Tine for putting their hearts and souls into everything they do. It’s an honor to have purchased one of their builds, and I look forward to sharing more about it soon after it gets covered in southern Arizona dust this winter.
Josh’s Fern Bicycles Chuck Parts List
Frame: Fern Bicycles
Stem: Fern Bicycles
Fork: Cyber Cycles Cross Blade
Racks: Allygn Components
Bags: Gramm Tourpacking
Rims: Velocity Quill
Lights: SON Nabendynamo
Hubs: SON/Tune
Brake Levers: Gevenalle
Brakes: Shimano XT V-Brakes
Derailleur: Shimano XTR with Garbaruk Cage and Pulleys
Crank: Shimano Dura-Ace with Grabaruk Chainring
Handlebar: BTCHN
Seatpost: Thomson
Headset: Wolf Tooth
Bar Tape: Ergon
Saddle: Tune Speed Needle
Browse saddles, grips, and more at ERGON.