Cyclist
Meet the maker: Fabio Putzolu of Ichnu Cycles
Adapt or die: a choice that was faced by many small businesses during the pandemic. The cafe down the road started running a delivery service, your personal trainer decided to host their sessions over Zoom, and, if you’re from Sardinia, your local independent bike brand stopped procuring carbon frames from China and began making them itself.
That’s how Fabio Putzolu started Ichnu Cycles. When Covid-19 made operating his original brand, Fabike, impossible due to the resulting supply chain issues, he decided that the only way to ensure he could continue to make bicycles was to start crafting them on home turf instead.
‘Everything at Fabike was 100 per cent designed by me, but it was produced in Asia,’ says Putzolu. ‘After the crisis of the pandemic, I wanted to be absolutely independent from a production point of view. I wanted to be able to control all the manufacturing and work with fewer suppliers – all local. Now all of my suppliers are based in Europe. I even produce the carbon fibre myself, so these really are bespoke, handmade, custom products.’
Deriving its name from ‘Ichnusa’, the ancient name for Sardinia, Ichnu uses some pretty advanced materials and methods in its frame manufacture, with a view to making them stronger, more durable and more sustainable than their mass-produced carbon counterparts.
‘What I decided to do was to use titanium 3D printed parts to join my tubes,’ Putzolu says. ‘This way all the critical parts of the frame are made of titanium, such as the bottom bracket, the dropouts and the seatpost clamp. On top of that, the carbon fibre tubes are reinforced with Dyneema. It’s similar to Kevlar but even stronger, and it has a much greater impact resistance.
‘The reason you rarely see companies using this stuff to produce carbon fibre tubes is because it requires a special manufacturing process. Dyneema can only tolerate temperatures up to 70°C, but carbon fibre is produced at 120°C, so if you use the typical prepreg technology to produce tubes, Dyneema is no good.
‘What I use to create my tubes is a technology called filament winding [a technique that involves winding fibres onto a rotating mandrel to form tubes], which can be done below 70°C, allowing me to incorporate Dyneema.’
This bike, called the Era, features its fair share of curved tubes, which adds a whole extra level of complexity to the tube manufacturing process.
‘We all know that curved tubes improve comfort,’ says Putzolu. ‘A curved seat tube is more comfortable because it’s more prone to flex than a straight tube, and it’s similar for the seatstays. There are lots of brands doing curved tubes, but it’s very difficult to produce filament-wound tubes that are curved – the usual technology of filament winding requires you to have a straight tube.
‘What I have come up with is a way of producing filament-wound tubes that allows bending. I can’t tell you exactly how, because it’s awaiting patent, but if you look around you will not see curved filament-wound tubes anywhere else, so it’s pretty special.’
Island life
Despite his obvious technical knowledge, Putzolu doesn’t come from an engineering background. He spent many years in the advertising industry before deciding to follow his passion and pivot into a career in cycling.
When he’s not in the workshop he can be found riding his local roads and trails in Sardinia, although he’s the first to admit that while the scenery is stunning, the quality of the tarmac (and the motorists on it) could be better.
‘When the new trend of gravel bikes came about, it was the perfect fit for me,’ he says. ‘I could explore places that were not accessible on a road bike, and I felt safer because I was not sharing my space with cars.’
With that in mind, the Era makes a lot of sense.
‘It’s sort of between a road bike and a gravel bike,’ says Putzolu. ‘The one you see here is set up mostly for gravel. I’m using adjustable rear dropouts and fork dropouts so that the tyre clearance and geometry can be altered depending on the terrain. It’s all custom geometry, so once you have your perfect fit you can just swap between road and gravel on the same frame.’
Componentry wise, the bike is built around a Sram Force AXS 1x groupset with a Garbaruk gravel crankset, Repente Artax GLM saddle and matching brown bar tape. It’s finished in a deep marbled green paintjob and Putzolu let attendees loose with a gold marker to decorate it with the brand’s name in various styles when he showed the bike at last year’s Bespoked handmade bicycle show.
Putzolu isn’t selling the Era just yet, but that’s set to change soon. Once he starts taking orders, prices are expected to be between €5,000 and €5,500 for a frameset with a basic paintjob and custom geometry.
‘Lead time could be around eight to ten weeks,’ he says, ‘but I don’t think it will be a really long time because 3D printing makes things quick. And tubes, even if they are made in-house, can be kept in stock then cut and glued to order. We’re still in the prototyping phase now but the aim is to have the final product ready by summer.’
Ichnu Era • Price TBC (expected €5,000-€5,500 frameset) • ichnu.com
• This article originally appeared in issue 149 of Cyclist magazine. Click here to subscribe
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