Channing Hammond is the founder of Hammond Made bikes, based in Santa Barbara, California. At the MADE custom bike and frame building show in Portland last week, Hammond was one of the few builders with a tried-and-true aluminum 29er hardtail on display.
Hammond has been building bike frames for at least seven years. If his name sounds familiar, that is probably because it is. Hammond founded the popular bikepacking and cargo-rack brand Old Man Mountain in the mid-1990s. (Decades later, Hammond sold Old Man Mountain to Chris Kratsch and Katy Bryce, who started The Robert Axle Project in Bend, Oregon.)
“I think that there’s a lot of ability to be creative with aluminum,” Hammond said. “It’s also clean, from a holistic level — it gets repurposed because it’s so highly recyclable. From a product lifecycle standpoint, working with aluminum makes sense.”
Aluminum is not only a highly sustainable material, but it also keeps prices down significantly. Prices for many of the frames at MADE, especially titanium ones, can stretch to several thousand dollars, compared to $1,800 for a Hammond Made frame. And while titanium is touted as lightweight, Hammond said his frame weighs only three pounds.
So why don’t more frame builders work with aluminum? The finishing heat treatment is one of the reasons. Many aluminum frames require heat treatment in an oven to solidify the metal and improve weld strength. That requires a large oven, which Hammond has in his workshop. In fact, he does all the fabrication and welding himself, as well as powder coating and finish work too.
One frame, two different hardtail mountain bikes
The result is one frame, but two different bikes.
First is the All Day, a trail hardtail designed as an everyday trail bike.
Utilizing the same frame but reconnecting with his Old Man Mountain heritage, Hammond also has the Weekender, with customizable racks. Most notable is the rack mounted on the downtube near the bottom bracket. Hammond told me that he was looking for a way to use this space better than just holding a water bottle — which it can do, but so much more. He also intentionally kept the mounting points away from the seat tube to allow for full dropper post insertion.
Riding in the techy hills of Santa Barbara, Hammond also designed the frames with a slightly higher bottom bracket for clearance. The head tube angle sits at 65°, and the seat tube is 75°. While he prefers a shorter back end and overall wheelbase for the tight, aggressive terrain the All Day and Weekender are designed for, Hammond works with his customers to build each frame to their preferred geometry.
“That’s really the impetus for this bike,” he said. “I try to really thread that needle to get something that can climb well and is long enough that it’s stable on an aggressive technical downhill, but also able to handle a tight switchback.”
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