Tom Ritchey is Selling Fillet Brazed Bullmoose Bars and Forks for Vintage Ritchey MTB Owners

While John was checking in with Ritchey before Sea Otter, he got a sneak peek at the new Tom Ritchey-built Bullmoose bars and bi-plane forks Tom was working on for owners of these original 1980 Ritchey Mountain Bikes. Tom said he was inspired by both John’s and David Harrison’s restoration work on these non-serial 1980 frames that were sold without Bullmoose bars or forks.

Well, the news is live today that Tom Ritchey will be debuting this collection in person at MADE, so let’s check out the full 411 below!

Almost five decades since he built his first mountain bike, Tom Ritchey is building to order his coveted Bullmoose bars and bi-plane forks for owners of his original Mountain Bikes by Ritchey frames. Launching at the 2024 MADE show in Portland, Oregon, under the moniker of Mountain Bikes by Tom, Tom will present a limited run of available bi-plane forks with three configurations of Bullmoose bar and accept orders from existing Ritchey owners.

While John was visiting, the samples weren’t complete but today Ritchey shared completed Bullmoose bars and forks!

As an added bonus, Tom will offer a brazing seminar and brief lecture on comprehensive design and why custom-built framesets matter. Show attendees will have the opportunity to witness the godfather of the mountain bike with torch in hand and in his element at the Ritchey booth, #358, on Saturday, August 24 at noon.

“I’ve been witnessing this for years — where people don’t have the fork or bar that was designed to go with their Ritchey frame, and they’re scrounging around for them. I started seeing replacement parts for my frames that were missing details. They were made by others, and they weren’t doing them right. Now, after all these years I’m helping these fans do it right.” — Tom Ritchey

For Tom, it wasn’t just about designing a double triangle frame, but rather engineering a complete purpose-built bicycle — including forks of specific rake and flex to handle confidently off-road, and assertive cockpits that wouldn’t slip or give way to newly rideable terrain. When Tom first produced his mountain bike frames, he already had a vocabulary for these types of solutions that would be needed for these off-road machines. To address this, Tom designed a comprehensive solution.

Enter the Bullmoose bar and bi-plane fork. In the early days of Mountain Bikes by Ritchey, every bike sold featured these signature products. However, demand rose faster than Tom could keep up with and a different solution needed to be reached.

John’s 1980 “Chicken Coop” no-serial Ritchey Mountain Bike has an Ed Litton fork and a period-correct Ritchey Bullmoose

Buried in the legend of the “Chicken Coop” bike and other frames of that era were a few hundred frames that were sold without their intended forks and thus began their lives somewhat incomplete.