It’s spring here finally and it was the perfect day to finally open the big door and clean the shop after a winter’s worth of grit had built up. Winter is long here and the opportunity to really open things up and clean in the winter is rare and this year it was winter until 2 days ago.

Since the place is clean I thought I’d give you a tour of the facility. When I have folks come for a visit I always joke about giving them the tour of the “Kirk Frameworks World Headquarters – the KFWH” and tell them to bring walking shoes so their poor feet won’t get tired from walking all around the plant. The reality is of course that I work from my home and everything is right here at hand. 

I use three parts of the house for business. First is the office and it’s pretty clean and simple. I have my Mac and a few desk toys and a view out the window to die for. The office is above the garage and overlooks the Bridger Mountains.

The second spot is in the basement and I use I use it for a bit of storage and for taking photos. It’s the “Kirk Frameworks Photo Documentation Lab”. Lots of lights, a simple stand and some photo backdrop paper and I’m all set. Most every product photo on my site was taken here.

Lastly we have the “Kirk Frameworks Production and Operations Plant” otherwise known as my garage. About 2/3 of the garage space is used for building frames and storing raw materials. The remaining 1/3 is used for my autocross race car (a 1999 Birkin S3). You might notice a few things (or a lack of a few things really) in the shop photos. First is there aren’t rows of bikes in various states of completion hanging from hooks. The simple and blunt reason for this is that I build one frame at a time, from start to finish and then I send it off to it’s owner. I figure that the customer wants the bike more than I do so I don’t fill my shop with customer’s bikes on hooks. The only bikes in the shop are our personal bikes and the one customer bike that’s in progress. When these shots were taken there were a few more personal bikes in the basement, still in winter storage, but Karin’s and my road bikes are hanging and my BMX bike is ready and waiting for the track to dry out.

The other thing you might notice is that there are no milling machines or lathes or laser guided alignment devices. I have nothing against these tools and I also have no use for them. I do most everything by hand as it’s the fastest and most accurate way I know how to build one-off bikes. I’ve spent a lot of time in my past life using mills and lathes and if I were building many bikes of the same size they might make sense. But the reality of my situation is that of the few hundred Kirks rolling around out there there are no two with the same geometry or build spec. So tools like mills and lathes would be in the way and cause me to need a bigger space which would mean I need to move the shop out of the house…………. a slippery financial slope that is for sure and a change in lifestyle I have no urge to make.

Lastly you might notice a portrait on the wall. It’s a painting of my father John whom the JK Special is named after. He was a master mechanic and craftsman and he keeps an eye on me to keep the standard high.

So here it is. It’s not much but it’s home and work all in one little package. Please feel free to stop by for the full tour. Remember to bring comfy shoes  and don’t forget a bike. A visit isn’t complete unless we go out and do a bit of R&D.

 

Happy Spring,

Dave

 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 at 12:47 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.