A day in Somerville, MA. What really goes on at Independent Fabrication?

We are proud to announce that Independent Fabrication has come to Burlington!Last week Harris and Chris headed down to Independant Fabrication's workshop in Somerville, MA.  As IF dealers and owners we wanted to see the shop first hand to get a better understanding of the process and meet the crew putting faces to names.Independent Fabrication began with the closing of Fat City Cycles in 1994.  A few members of the Fat crew decided they didn't want that to be the end of their bicycle fabrication careers and a year later they formed IF as a 100% employee owned operation.  15 years and counting, Independent Fabrication has long proved themselves to be the pinnicale of custom, handbuilt bicycle frames and forks taking home several top honors from the Noth American Handbuilt Bike Show, Bicycling Magazine''s dream bike, as well as numerous other awards for craftsmanship and quality.Here's Tyler Evans, the head of welding and creative  director, in action.One of the best things about an Indy Fab bike is that it is your bike.  There will never be an identical bike out there.  IF is a small operation and this is evident in the process of making your bike.  The whole process is more of a conversation with you, the bike shop (us), and the IF crew.  They take pride in creating a bike to exactly fit you and your needs they told us, "there is never too much information.  Besides your body measurements we want to know what you are riding now, how it fits, what you like about it and what you would change.  We want to know your riding style and the primary use for your bike.  We take all this information into account when designing and building each individual frame. "   Everything from the tubeset to the geomatry is chosen specifically with all this information in mind.  The result is a bicycle designed and built especially for you, from the fit of the bike to tuning the ride of the bike to suit your needs and stlye of riding. And then to top it all off their PPG certifide paint crew turns raw metal into a century-destroying, trail-crushing piece of fine art. It was a great day down in Boston, after visiting IF we grabbed our bikes and rode around visiting with our counter parts at some of the local shops. We thoroughly enjoyed the lunch recomendation of Redbones, a Louisianna BBQ joint that caters to the bike culture and even provides vallet parking for your two wheeler. You can check out more photos from the trip here.