My frame number one (a bit like Uncle Scrooge's famous "Number One Dime"!) was built back in 1995 under the name "Blacksmith Cycles", a name that stayed on some of the frames I made afterwards too. I built it because I wanted a bike that was truly mine and that responded as well as possible to the way I ride.
You can say the bike has held up well: I still use it for the hardest, most demanding rides.
Building that first handmade frame only led to Forgione Telai years later. The aim was not commercial: I wanted to build by hand a bicycle of the very highest level.
It was the fruit of passion and play, which then drew in a growing circle of cycling friends.
The name itself shows that I wasn't thinking of making frames for a living: an Italian bicycle brand with a completely English name!
When my closest friends saw the finished bike, at first they were a little incredulous.
Some said it would shatter on the first tough descent. Others bet on how many days that handmade bike would last.
But I knew what I was doing: I never throw myself into something, even just for fun, unless I have clear ideas and feel sure of myself.
All the same, at the beginning I preferred to "risk" only myself, and I tried the bike on the same trails I used to ride with my Diamondback, the mountain bike I had started off-road riding with.
I went step by step. I was convinced there would be no problems, but my friends' doubts had made me a little wary (for no reason, as it turned out), so I wanted to be careful.
Laboratory tests had assured me that my frame could withstand stresses far greater than anything a mountain bike trail could produce. But sometimes you have to try it to believe it.
And so I did.
All the tests went well, and to my friends' amazement, the wish to own a "Blacksmith" made by me began to spread.
Little by little the bikes multiplied. Almost all the frames marked "Blacksmith Cycles" were made between about 1995 and 1998, only for my long-standing friends.
Some still ride proudly today on a bike with that name, quick to point out: "You don't know this is a Forgione, ultra-exclusive line!" :)
Warm regards and happy riding,
Vincenzo
