{"id":267193,"date":"2025-11-17T04:37:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T04:37:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/267193\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T04:37:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T04:37:14","slug":"arranging-disorder-inside-the-mind-and-craft-of-richard-sachs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/267193\/","title":{"rendered":"Arranging Disorder: Inside the Mind and Craft of Richard Sachs"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOOKShelf: As the calendar turns toward another year, few rituals in the cycling world carry the anticipation\u2014and scarcity\u2014of Richard Sachs opening his order book. On December 15, the revered American framebuilder will release just forty build slots for 2026, a tightly controlled queue he has limited to twelve months since 2018. Yet Sachs\u2019 influence stretches far beyond the torch and the file. For decades he has chronicled his inner and outer craft in sharp, meditative prose, and now those reflections have taken on a life of their own in his \u201cArrange Disorder\u201d book series. Part memoir, part workshop philosophy, and part lyrical stream-of-consciousness, these small, elegant volumes offer a rare window into the mind of a maker who has spent more than fifty years searching for order in the beautiful chaos of shaping steel.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

One of the deans of American framebuilding, Mr. Sachs has more than one string to his bow.\u00a0 On his Facebook page he expresses himself in interesting and carefully-constructed snippets.\u00a0 Now his creative writing appears in more substantial format as his \u201cArrange Disorder\u201d books capture thoughts from years of journal keeping and online writing.<\/p>\n

\"R<\/p>\n

Volumes 1 and 2 of \u201cArrange Disorder\u201d came out out this year, with Volume 3 in production at the time of writing.\u00a0 They are small (70 pages or so) beautifully-presented books of short pieces alternating with atmospheric images.\u00a0 The text dips into the thoughts of someone who has stood at his workbench for over 50 years crafting steel bicycle frames.\u00a0 They are thoughts about working metal, about tools, about clients, about learning as well as about teaching.<\/p>\n

\"R<\/p>\n

Richard Sachs came to framebuilding in a roundabout manner.\u00a0 A bike racing enthusiast from an early age, he also learned that he had a talent for writing.\u00a0 Wishing to enroll in a college course for creative writing, he was accepted but then learned that the course was filled and it would be some months before he could take it up.\u00a0 Seeing an ad in \u201cThe Village Voice\u201d for a bike mechanic, he jumped on a bus and showed up at the shop unannounced.\u00a0 He declared himself ready to start to work only to learn that the position was filled.\u00a0 He also realized he probably was not really qualified for it anyway.\u00a0 So to address his shortcomings on his return home he wrote to thirty English framebuilders offering to become an unpaid apprentice and learn the trade.\u00a0 One of them took him up and so it all began.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

\"R<\/p>\n

The creative writing urge did not fade. Mr. Sachs heeded the advice of one of his teachers to keep a journal.\u00a0 As he works with his files seeking that stroke that is not too little or a step too far, his prose is transparent and carefully weighted.\u00a0 Here is where the books\u2019 title comes from: \u201cI like order I crave order I live a life of disorder\u2026..There\u2019s the vision I have. And then there\u2019s real. The closer I get, the further it moves from me.\u00a0 The order, that is. That\u2019s why I arrange disorder. I try. When I can, that is. Because in this life full of distraction and lack of focus and overcommitment and attention span lapse and tumult and everything else that vies for a moment of my time, the closest I get to order is to line a few things up, wait for light and hope to carve out some peace. Then darkness comes, shadows appear and everything begins again, again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"R<\/p>\n

The books have no Table of Contents but rather each page takes you through a kind of stream-of-consciousness, with the author giving consideration to the nature of the files he uses to how framebuilding as a craft has changed.\u00a0 From old school metalworkers in London in the 1970s, with no power tools or aspirations much above putting in competent work for the paycheque, to a world with online fora.\u00a0 He wrote in 2013: \u201cA decade ago, my trade resembled a Y2K amalgam of needlepoint, craft brewing and drum circles.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also writes: \u201cBy the 1990s, many of the framebuilders who toiled at benches, the brands they grandfathered in, and a complete layer of cycling history began to vaporize. Nearly all the men I think of as having preceded me didn\u2019t so much finish their careers as much as they parlayed them into larger commercial endeavours, or simply gave up.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"R<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

People entered the trade with some romantic notion of the maker as an uber-creative but Mr. Sachs, who is clearly proud to be a craftsman, dismisses the idea of a bicycle as an artwork. \u201cA bicycle is a sporting good, and its frame has to be designed well, allow its user to assimilate an efficient position, and its aesthetic should please the maker, the owner, or both.\u201d Still one senses more in \u201cArrange Disorder\u201d that there is always the pursuit of perfection.\u00a0 Several times there is reference that every frame is different, every time there are things that go right and others not so much, that one is shaped by the metal as much as one shapes it.<\/p>\n

\"R<\/p>\n

Design matters.\u00a0 Mr. Sachs was not satisfied with the lugs on offer.\u00a0 He began to design his own in 1981 and have them forged, often with names that are salutes to the past\u2013Newvex, Rene Singer, PegoRichie\u2013as the line expanded.\u00a0 These are available to other framebuilders and at age 72 he tries to encourage other makers.\u00a0 He clearly has the aesthetic thing down.\u00a0 There is the careful font design from working with House Industries on his frames. We see this in the style and appearance of the \u201cArrange Disorder\u201d books.\u00a0 They are pleasure to hold and invite the reader to leaf through them again and again, attractive chaos perhaps.\u00a0 There is even a haiku on Volume 2 on Page 40, which seemed inevitable.\u00a0 And to my eyes the elegant \u201cRS\u201d logo looks very much like the nib of a pen.<\/p>\n

\"R<\/p>\n

\u201cPut in a nickel, get an opinion\u201d it says in Volume 2.\u00a0 Mr. Sachs is noted for \u201catmo,\u201d which means \u201caccording to my opinion\u201d. He has a lot to say as one sees on Facebook or when going through the impressive and absorbing Sachs website.\u00a0 For someone who once received a damning \u201cNo Effort At All\u201d note about his work on a report card this is pretty good.<\/p>\n

Those about to reserve those 40 frames will know that the man who makes them has given five decades of thought to their meticulous construction.\u00a0 \u201cArrange Disorder\u201d gives insight into that thought process.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

\"R<\/p>\n

\u201cArrange Disorder,\u201d Volumes 1 & 2, by Richard Sachs<\/p>\n

72 pages each, with illustrations, softbound<\/p>\n

Deep River Books, Deep River Connecticut, 2025<\/p>\n

ISBN: 979-8-89778-343-4 (Vol. 1)<\/p>\n

ISBN: 979-8-89860-672-5 (Vol. 2)<\/p>\n

# Each volume is US$28, or US$50 for Vols. 1&2 and may be ordered HERE<\/a>. #<\/p>\n

# Richard Sachs\u2019 website is HERE<\/a>. #<\/p>\n


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