December 7, 2009
Sasha White: Trike
Trike is a custom built tricycle made by Sasha White of Vanilla Bicycles.
The front end is fabricated almost completely of Stainless steel. This includes the handle bar and stem (inspired by cafe racer style motorcycle bars), the head tube with built-in lug work and double down-tube bullet ends, the fork and cranks which both have lug ports built off of them. All of this was machined and welded from raw pieces of stainless tubing and solid stock. Once welded, the weld beads were filed and sanded to give each piece the appearance of being made from a single piece of metal, rather than segments that were pieced together.
The grips were made from cherry wood and polished aluminum, inspired by the lovely turn of the century bikes with wooden or cork grips that were carved into an elegant elliptical shape. The rear platform was also made of cherry wood and has a sky blue inlay around the perimeter with a stainless inlaid Vanilla script.
The rear end of the trike is made of chromoly tubing. All of the curves were completed in-house. We built the mandrels for this project from hardwood and shaped the tubes by heating them and pulling them around the wooden forms.
