Form Cycle’s new disc brake road bike is built from KVA stainless steel and gets internal routing and brazed on small bits (disc brake tabs, cable ports, bottle bosses) for a cleaner look.

They’re also working on a gravel road version that’ll have more tire clearance thanks to S-bend chainstays. It’ll also get a slightly relaxed head angle and use ENVE’s road disc fork, which has a bit more clearance.

For gnarlier terrain, there’s a ti fat bike and stainless mountain bike, plus great rides from Vendetta and Don Walker, below…

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Carl Strong had but one bike on display at NAHBS this year: Carl’s Personal Blend.

It’s a new concept dirt road bike designed to show his take on a disc brake road bike aimed at rough road, back country riding. Bottom bracket is lower than a ‘cross bike, and head tube is a bit slacker to accommodate the increased rake of ENVE’s disc cyclocross fork. This gives it a bit longer front center/wheelbase and more toe clearance. It’ll handle at least a 37mm tire with knobbies, but he can make more room by fabricating a fork, too.

The geometry is, of course, is customized for each rider, but is a balance between a road and ‘cross bike’s performance with the relaxed geometry for longer days on roads less traveled.

Hit ‘more’ for a detail shot and a look at a variety of bicycles from Alliance and DeSalvo, too…

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Mosaic has typically just built what people wanted. Problem is, people sometimes don’t know what they want. Or, at least, they it helps to give them a starting point.

So, Mosaic has for the first time launched specific models to make “custom” a little less intimidating. Bikes are now given simple letter codes: R (road), M (mountain) and X (cyclocross).

While many builders order their headtubes from a tubing supplier like Paragon, they machine their own headtubes in house. They machine the internals to fit the headset bearings and the butting on the outside. Also, they’re doing more integrated internal cable routing across a range of bikes, and it’s being done very well.

For road bikes, shown above, they now offer a disc brake option. Click through for details and their mountain bike options, including a custom titanium Dirt Jumper…

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When you’re running errands or joy riding a custom frame by a worthy builder, snagging a quality bag seems the next logical step.

We saw quite a few bags at NAHBS this year, from backpacks to frame bags ranging in material from lightweight synthetic to rugged quality leather. First up, the ILE Transfer-Race Day bag (pictured) is a lightweight bag that struck our eyes with crit season now upon us. It’s made with an XPAC sailcloth, and is spec’d to hold gear for the race, and for the commute afterwards with 7 compartments for anything from helmets to dirty socks.

Click through the break for ILE Transfer-Race Day closeups, and many many more bags…

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Trends at NAHBS this year included the ever growing fat bike segment, adventure/gravel road bikes, and less show and more go from a lot of the builders. While we here at BikeRumor love to see the flashy one-off show pieces, as an attendee of the show, it’s really great seeing good clean examples of bikes the builder makes day in and day out.

Past the break check out more from Gangl, Stinner Frameworks, Castle Frameworks Steve Potts (Best Tig Welded Frame), and Soulcraft. 

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Caletti gave us a heads up he’d be bringing his new Adventure Road bike, a blend between road and cyclocross bikes, and now we’ve got the details.

Builder John Caletti, who works out of Santa Cruz, CA, says they ride a lot of stretches where there are significant gravel or rough stretches. This provides the performance of a road bike but is more comfortable for long rides than a ‘cross bike.

It’s built with Columbus Life and OX Platinum steel tubing.  Click through for detail shots of this and his new, lightweight Road Race Special, which may just burn your eyes…

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Kirklee has developed new tooling and molds to create their own seatstays, chainstays and dropouts, giving them more control over the layup for custom builds and more modern look. The side benefit is that it sheds a few grams, too.

They’ve been making their own top and downtubes for three years. The headtube is Dedacciai, but they’re looking to make that soon, too. They started making the bladder molded stays for their 29er in January 2012, which served as proof of concept that gave them the confidence to make their own for the road bike. The result is a bike that’s even more individual than other handbuilt carbon bikes.

Check that out, plus updates to the 29er and their usual display of beautiful custom paint jobs, below…

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Cycling’s not always about crushing your competition on Strava. Sometimes it’s about getting out in the sun for a cruise around the city. These three builders came to the show with beautiful around-towners built up to handle anything from a work commute to a picnic.

Based out of Cincinatti, Lundbeck Cycles brought a spectacular build this year. Using 650b wheels with Pacenti rims and Phil Wood hubs, it’s packed with all the perks, like a one piece bar/stem combo with cable routing, a brushed aluminum Campagnolo Veloce groupset, and wooden fenders by Paul Sykes.

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We almost overlooked Gokiso’s booth, but as we passed by we overheard some interesting chatter. Something about suspension inside the hubs. Ding! Curiousity piqued…but that’s only half the story of these amazing hubs.

Two different hubs were on display, the externally suspended front hub shown above, and an internally suspended rear hub. Both operate on what’s essentially a lot of little leaf springs, and we’ve embedded a video below to show how it works, plus tons of pics.

The other thing that really blew our mind, which is also illustrated at the beginning of the first video, is the insanely low friction these hubs have. With most rear hubs, if you hold the freehub body and give the shell a spin, you’re lucky to get a few rotations. I did that with the internally suspended rear hub and it spun and spun. It’s hard to convey in words how good it felt. ENVE founder Jason Schiers happened to be standing next to me and said he has several friends in Japan that race them and won’t ride anything else, they’re that good.

Click on through for more…

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We recently profiled Argonaut Cycles’ carbon road bike manufacturing process, and at NAHBS they showed off the very limited edition of their printed Look Book. It’s quite pretty, but there are only a handful of them IRL.

Now they’ve made it available as a digital download here, and had this to say about the effort:

“Brian Vernor did an amazing job capturing Ben’s vision and passion for ride quality and life on the bike. Argonaut is excited to publicly release the book, as only a select few have physical copies. Many thanks to Brian and David at Wilderness for helping us put this project together. We hope you enjoy it.”

PS. They also showed an SL prototype of their road bike.