The Man in the Machine - Paragon Machine Works

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REDUCE, REUSE, REINVENT
BUILDING A BETTER BIKE SHOP
PARAGON’S MARK NORSTAD IS
Display until June 30, 2014
THE MAN IN THE MACHINE
fortuitous timing and a few crucial connections, most jobs he took
on happened to be related to Marin’s burgeoning mountain bike
scene of the 1980s.
But what kick-started the business was a job Paragon did for
Merlin Metalworks, an original manufacturer of titanium frames. One
of the company’s founders, Gary Helfrich, contacted Norstad about
making some titanium dropouts. When Paragon delivered, news of the
Norstad’s ability reached other welders, and he became a close supplier
to such legendary framebuilders as Steve Potts, Charlie Cunningham,
Keith Bontrager, Tom Ritchey, Bruce Gordon and others.
“The framebuilding community was such a small group back
then that word of mouth spread pretty quickly,” Norstad said.
From then on the business grew steadily, with Norstad taking
on more jobs, buying more CNC machines and lathes, and hiring
more employees. Since its founding, the business has grown every
single year except 2009, during the economic downturn. In 2007, the
company graduated to its current building in Richmond, allowing
plenty of room for the business to grow and mature. Paragon has
gradually kept expanding its offerings, including recently starting to
sell titanium tubing.
Today, about one-third of Paragon’s business comes from
companies outside the bike industry, including a handful of bigticket clients who approached Paragon with their own CAD drawings
in hand, ready to go. The projects span an incredible range, including
winemaking equipment, lockrings used on race cars, and housing for
lasers on robots. But that work can come and go; bike industry jobs
have been steady, which has led Paragon to put most of its energy
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into developing those relationships.
“In the economic downturn a few years ago, the non-bike
projects dried up and, tellingly, it was the bike stuff that really got us
through,” Norstad said.
‘SIMPLE AND ELEGANT’ DESIGN
Paragon has developed a reputation for its machining expertise, but
there’s also a design element that sets the company apart. Paragon
consistently releases innovative widgets that framebuilders use to
make their bikes more simple and user-friendly. In recent years,
design has become a more important aspect of Paragon’s products,
especially with the work of expert designer and programmer Jeff
McWhinney.
For most machined frame parts, the dimensions and standards
are set by large component manufacturers, leaving little room for
innovation. But “the design element comes in when you connect the
dots in a way that’s simple and elegant,” Norstad said. “We make
things that people want to pick up, look at and touch. That’s the true
test.”
One of those recent projects is the newly released Toggle Drop,
a rocker-style dropout that rotates a bike’s rear axle back to simplify
chain or belt tension on singlespeeds. The Toggle Drop improves on
previous rocker dropout designs by locking into place with a simple
toggle joint, rather than using threaded bolts to push the dropout
backward. A rider can use a thumbscrew on the dropout plate to
set precise chain tension, essentially creating a “set-it-and-forget-it”
tension feature that makes it easy to remove and replace the wheel.
The Toggle Drop design was the result of years of CAD
work and prototypes. Norstad came up with a rough sketch of
the design and fleshed it out with McWhinney before giving
prototypes to his closest customers and building up a bike for
himself.
“I rode the bike for almost a year and found all the weak
points,” Norstad said. “I’m really proud of this one; it’s the first
project where I’ve actually filed for a patent.”
As his customers can attest, Norstad is able to innovate
because he rides regularly and can spot the inefficiencies of any
frame. Although Paragon never intends to sell its own frames,
Norstad has welded about half a dozen frames on his own “just
out of curiosity.” That curiosity has given him an acute sense of
the challenges framebuilders face every day.
“One of Paragon’s biggest strengths is that Mark really rides;
he knows what works and what doesn’t,” Boucher said. “It’s such a
unique situation to work with someone who has those machining
skills and is also a bike guy who has design sense.”
A WELL-OILED MACHINE
Anyone who touches a machine at Paragon is held to a high
standard: Even if they have previous machining experience, the
unique nature of making bike parts makes for a steep learning
curve.
“It takes a lot to get new people going,” Norstad said. “We
can get someone going within six months, but real proficiency
takes years.”
A staff of 10 employees keeps Paragon running smoothly,
including six full-time machinists and machine operators. Their
6,000-square-foot building includes a small upstairs office that
houses the shipping, design and administrative sides of the
business, as well as the larger machine shop on the ground level.
The shop floor consists of 11 large machines (six mills and five
lathes), as well as plenty of room for uncut metal billets, tubing
and barrels of metal shavings waiting to be recycled.
On any given day, machine operators will start a batch of parts
by first selecting raw material they need and cutting it to size.
They then put the metal pieces in a mill or a lathe and program
a computer code into the machine. As the machine cuts the
metal, the operator keeps an eye on the process, watching for any
irregularities.
Machine operators are responsible for quality control, so
as each part comes out of the machine they will make sure it is
“within tolerance,” which for most parts means plus or minus
five-thousandths of an inch of the part’s specification. In some
cases the tolerance can be as exact as two-thousandths of an inch
or below.
The operator will keep feeding material into the machine,
checking oil and coolant levels (some machines operate on total oil
loss and have to continually be topped off). Some parts must be put
in buckets of water or degreaser to cool down or remove oil. When
a full batch of parts is complete, it might also be put into a large
rock tumbler to smooth edges down and remove any metal burrs.
The atmosphere on the shop floor is “busy, but not chaotic at
all,” said Tyler Larsen, a machine operator. “We can’t really rush
around because that’s when we start making mistakes. Our goal is
always to keep the machines running. But when they are running
we are at the mercy of their cycle time.”
Machine operators are also at the mercy of different metals’
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characteristics. Titanium in particular is a notoriously fickle material
to work with and takes much longer to manipulate. With the higher
price of the raw metal, it is especially challenging to produce in large
quantities.
“Titanium doesn’t dissipate heat the way steel does,” Larsen said.
“With steel, any heat we make cutting the material gets sucked away
from the tool. With titanium, because it’s not a good conductor, all
that heat stays right near where we are cutting. That heat causes tools
to degrade quickly and break. So with titanium we have to go much
slower when cutting.”
Despite titanium’s inherent challenges, Paragon’s quality
titanium offerings are what first set the company apart and continue
to make up about half of the parts it produces today.
THE BRIGHT FUTURE OF HANDMADE BIKES
“We keep waiting to see if the handmade trend in the bike industry
is a bubble that will burst, but it just keeps gathering steam, and it
really seems like it will be here for a while,” Norstad said.
“I think the popularity of handmade bikes could be part of the
whole ‘locavore’ movement where people want to be part of the
process,” he added. “For most builders I know, when they sign up a
customer part of the deal is giving them regular updates and photos.
It’s like having a baby: ‘Here’s my sonogram; here’s my frame in the
jig.’ That has real value, and people are willing to pay for it.”
Paragon appears to be well-positioned in the bright future of
handmade bikes. The company enjoys a sterling reputation without
having invested much in marketing, and instead relies on the strong
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relationships it has developed in 30 years in the business. Besides
a handful of advertisements in magazines, most of its promotional
effort comes down to its presence at trade shows like the North
American Handmade Bicycle Show (NAHBS).
“NAHBS is a huge thing for us,” Norstad said. “It started out as
being an interesting and fun trip, but now we really make an effort to
debut new parts there and work with new framebuilders to get our
stuff on their bikes.” At this year’s handmade show, Paragon worked
with Moots on a bike that became the centerpiece of their booth—a
singlespeed hardtail showcasing the Toggle Drop.
As for the long term, Paragon has few plans other than to keep
up with business as usual. Norstad’s accumulated knowledge has
made him the true center of the organization, and much of the shop
relies on his on-the-spot advice and guidance. Eventually, when the
time for retirement comes, Norstad said he may have to meticulously
train a manager to take over the day-to-day operations.
“Everything used to be in my head. Now the effort is trying to
get it out of my head and onto the computer so when a job comes
along, the resources are there and people don’t have to ask me how
we did it last time,” he said. “Eventually it would be great to get to
the point where I could be riding my bike three or four days a week
and only come in here a day or two a week.”
But for now, the pride and excitement of making something from
scratch with his own two hands is still there, keeping him going.
“Sometimes, I’ll be out on a bike ride and see my parts on a
frame or a bike company that I’ve never seen before,” Norstad said.
“That’s a pretty cool feeling.”
Our passion for riding bikes is matched
only by our passion for building them.
BUILD IT. RIDE IT.
Moots.com / GALLERY
the VA M O O T S R S L
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IT’S TIME TO MEET
YOUR MAKER
The Meet Your Maker Tour may sound like a lung-searing
hammerfest, but the title is not meant to characterize the ride. It’s
actually meant to be taken literally.
The semi-regular series of casual rides throughout Northern
California gives riders a chance to, well, meet the framebuilders
and component manufacturers who make their bikes. Riders jump
at the opportunity to pick the brains of the bike industry’s finest
craftsmen to learn more about bike design and aesthetics.
“It came about by just wanting to give people access to
builders in a non-trade show environment,” said Soulcraft Bikes’
founder Sean Walling, the architect of the tour. “Going on a ride
with your framebuilder is way better than standing around talking
in a stuffy convention hall.”
The tour was started by a small core of San Francisco Bay Area
builders in 2012. The atmosphere of every ride is loose and casual,
and the routes follow simple trails and roads in places like Oakland,
Marin, Santa Cruz and Napa. There is no marketing or hard-sell
vibe; it’s simply a chance for the local bike scene to get together
and enjoy the work of some master craftsmen. Northern California
companies involved in the effort include Paragon Machine Works,
Soulcraft Bikes, Sycip, White Industries, Rock Lobster, Retrotec/
Inglis, Paul Components, Pass & Stow Racks, Caletti Cycles, Calfee
Design, Bruce Gordon Cycles, Black Cat and others.
“You do get plenty of people riding up next to you and asking
about the bike, but if we get together in a few years and find out
that no builder has sold a bike from the rides, that would be fine,”
Walling said.
With so many local companies and so many great places to
ride right out their front doors, the Meet Your Maker tour was a
no-brainer, according to Walling. But the Bay Area is just one of
a handful of hotbeds for handmade bikes in the U.S., including
places like Portland, Ore.; the Colorado Front Range; and parts of
New England.
“I’d love to see other builders across the country take it up
and run with it and just to try to get people riding,” said Paragon
founder Mark Norstad. “That’s what it’s all about.” –P. Riley
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