Meet a Maker: Edition 34

Meet Gary Woodhouse

1. What is your craft and how did you get into it?

I got my first BMX bike when I was 15 years old. At the time I had heard there was a guy who lived on the other side of town that was thinking about making some bikes alongside his motorbike business. He ended up making some BMX bikes and used to take all the kids from the town racing. I learned that if you turned up by 8.30am you were welcome to put your bike in the trailer. That was how I got to know Brian Curtis, who slowly went from making motorcycles for a living to stopping completely and concentrating solely on bicycles. I ended up riding for him and promoting his brand. When I left school, after I completed a year’s welding course, I ended up working in Mr Curtis’s workshop with him, prepping all the tubing for frames as my first job. That’s how it began and 45 years later, I am still here making bikes.

2. What is one interesting fact about you?

I am a drummer in an eight-piece reggae band. My band is still playing together and about to finish another album. We used to do it for a living in our 20s and toured all over Europe, but now we’re just doing it for pure pleasure.

3. How long have you been making?

I have been at Curtis Bikes for 45 years and owned and ran it for 30 years.

4. What is the most challenging skill/technique you learned in your craft?

The hardest bit I have recently taken on more of is the brazing, which is how we stick our metal together for the frame. It’s an old school form of welding where you melt a brass rod with a torch to attach to pieces of metal. It’s a silent process and not the type of welding where sparks are flying everywhere. Although I took over the business more than 30 years ago, Mr Curtis still did most of the brazing as he is a master at it. He’s been doing it forever and the quality of his finishing is outstanding. He retired last year, which has led me to take on the brazing. It’s quite hard for me to live up to Mr Curtis’s level of skill, so I’m trying to get there slowly.

5. What is your favourite part of your craft? 

I like the very end where I drive my frames to the painters. I help prep the bikes for the paint job, wait for them to be coated, then bring them back to the workshop for the finishing touches. I enjoy finishing the bikes off; putting on the decals, attaching the head badge, and making sure the bikes are as perfect as I can make them before I wrap and box them.

I also love to go to races and watch my riders racing our bikes. I run two teams. One is a BMX team and one is a mountain bike team. I’m proud of what they’ve done. We’ve had a few British Championships at Curtis Bikes and one of our riders made the World Finals for BMX racing when it was in Scotland last year.

6. What project are you most proud of and why?

It’s a tricky question because I make so many bikes. Some of the ones I like are for their aesthetics and designed purpose, but I might not sell many of them. I make a downhill hardtail bike where I have only sold a handful of them, but it’s a gorgeous bike. It just floats my boat and it’s designed for the type of ride I enjoy watching. However, I am very proud of the full suspension bike we make at Curtis Bikes. That type of bike took me a long time to make it as aesthetically pleasing as they are functional. I generally try to make the bikes look as low, slung, and fast as possible. I have a high bar for my level of finishing and the full suspension bike took me a long time to finally get it nailed to my standards.

7. If someone who knows nothing about you or your practice could know one thing, what would it be?

Bicycle frame making can be very personalised and customised. One of the elements that makes Curtis Bikes very different from most of my competitors is we cherry-pick the tubing. I ask my customers to tell me their story, and I will build a frame to suit their needs. How tall are they? How heavy are they? How do they ride? Light, medium, or heavy? From there, I can create the ultimate bespoke frame and I even stamp the owner’s name into the dropouts of each bike.