Peter Olivetti stumbled upon frame building when he was trying to find a particular bike, but what he wanted didn’t exist on the market. So he went to UBI in 2001, in Ashland, and took the ti bike building course.
Fast-forward 17 years – his previous life as a commercial fine art photographer had kept him busy for the better part of two decades, and it wasn’t until a somewhat recent move to Boulder, CO that he decided to focus again on frame building.
He is currently working only in steel and is about 15 bikes in on his own designs, but plans to get back into ti building in the next year or so. He believes that a quality product doesn’t need to be exorbitantly expensive or financially out of reach for most people, and offers stock and semi-custom options in the $1,400~$2,000 range. His design and build decisions are made around what he thinks works the best functionally – not what is overly fancy or driven by crowd interest.
While most of his bikes are tig welded, he worked with Mark Nobilette in Longmont Colorado for a year where he gained an appreciation for brazing and lug work.
The orange bike he brought, lovingly named the Dirt Kan (it was built for the Dirty kanza), features his own handmade bilaminate lugs that are a modern take on nervex lugs, as well as a modified Sachs seat tube lug and bb shell. It’s a modern take on a classic – something Olivetti intends to continue exploring as he builds more.
Oh, and about that bent tube “Thunder Pig” greenish-yellow bike at the top of the post? You’ll have to read our pre-show interview with him for details on that one!
