Finding His Religion

After 40 years ,Making Bikes is right Where Frank the welder wants to be.

- Berne Broudy

If there was a Hollywood Walk of Fame for people who have influenced and evolved the bicycle, 57-year-old Frank Wadelton would have a prominent star. “I don’t think a day has ever gone by when I didn’t at least touch a bicycle,” Wadelton confides. “What else can be said?”

Wadelton, better known as Frank the Welder, is an obsessive innovator, and bikes are his milieu. He’s built more bikes by hand than most anyone. He’s worked in aluminum, steel, ti and MMC (metal matrix composite) and even made a unicycle out of wood. He’s built frames for DH, DS, XC, trials, track, BMX and road. According to former colleagues, he fabricated the first double-sided clipless pedals and the first set of Shimano two fingered brake levers. In the 1990s, he co-designed and built Yeti frames and pioneered the XC “soft tail.” He spearheaded the use of plastic bushings in pivots and was the first to use MMC in frames. He was one of the first to weld a bike from lightweight Easton aluminum tubing. He designed the A-TAC stem and AccuTrax fork for Answer. Numerous pros have raced FTW frames to victory: John Tomac, Juli Furtado, Lisa Muhic, Tinker Juarez, Brian Lopes, Myles Rockwell, Missy Giove, Sara Ballantyne, Don Mirah, Derin and Kurt Stockton, Davis Phinney, Greg Oravetz, the Evian team, Leigh Donovan, Jimmy Deaton and Russ Worley.

When I call Wadelton for an interview, the first thing he does is sidestep his laundry list of accomplishments. “I have a natural dislike for things I have already done,” he says. “I only look forward to doing the next thing. It’s a weird sort of attitude that drives me. I run out of things to make for myself. I want to tackle other people’s problems.”