The Long Road to Our Tandem Frame

Roughly ten years ago, I took on a tandem bicycle project from Thorn Cycles in the UK.

It was my very first encounter with a tandem—and at the time, this unusual machine was still a rare sight.

Most riders and even industry professionals had little understanding of its unique components, configurations, or underlying mechanics.

Yet after successfully assembling that incredibly complex bike with pinpoint accuracy, the idea of designing our own tandem frame began to take root in my mind.

Not long after Thorn’s bike left my workshop, fate intervened at the Shanghai Auto Show. There, I stumbled upon a KHS “Dachshund” tandem—and I simply had to bring it home.

Riding it all the way across downtown Shanghai, I drew endless stares and questions from passersby. But I didn’t care—I had just met the woman who would become my wife, and love gave me the confidence to ignore every curious “NPC” along the street. That ride marked my second real experience with a tandem.

From then on, I kept urging BlackSnow: “Why don’t we build our own tandem?”

The answer was always the same: “The timing isn’t right.”

The main hurdle? A tandem frame requires an extra-long welding jig—a piece of equipment virtually no factory in China possessed. Without it, frame alignment and precision would suffer dramatically.

Anyone who knows BlackSnow—the brand’s founder—understands his stubborn streak. If something can’t be done to his exacting standards, he’d rather not do it at all.

We argued almost weekly. Yet the tandem project remained shelved… for nearly ten years.

The turning point came last year. BlackSnow and I began sketching out a series of unconventional bike designs—all of which demanded that same ultra-long welding table. With the idea of sharing tooling costs across multiple models, we finally decided: It’s now or never. We invested heavily to build the custom jig.

But that was only the beginning. To achieve the necessary lateral stiffness and torsional rigidity, the tandem frame also required structural reinforcements and geometry adjustments in key areas—meaning we needed entirely new molds and fixtures, unlike anything used for standard frames.

Now, as BlackSnow celebrates its 11th anniversary, its founder is more creatively energized than ever. He finally feels he has both the capability and the confidence to tackle projects he once dreamed of—but hesitated to start.

So let’s look forward—to the first test ride of this tandem once it’s fully built, and to the other special bikes yet to come.