Introducing, Mad Fiber

Many of you have been curious as to what has become of the now empty bakery down at the Essential Baking Company building. Back in the first week of February the production packed up all their bread making ingredients and shipped their ovens down to Georgetown in south Seattle. Sadly, dumpster diving went with them. The bakery was an empty and eerie place; the hustle and bustle of hundreds of workers was gone and the drop of a pin echoed off the walls.

Those eerie and silent days are over. A wall has been built separating the Cafe and kitchen from the rest of the building and a new business has moved in.

Introducing, Mad Fiber, a bicycle wheel manufacturing company. They have transformed what was once a bread-making machine into a carbon fiber bike wheel production zone. That’s a bit of a mouthful, but the production of carbon fiber wheels follows a strangely similar step-by-step process to that of bread. I had the pleasure of touring the wheel production zone and learned that they have to bake their product in an oven that could feasibly be used to make pizza. Strange, yes. But true.

The materials required to make the carbon fiber are kept in a freezer that happens to be in almost exactly the same location as the old walk-in freezer for The Essential Baking Company. They remove the materials from the freezer and bring them up to the appropriate temperature so that they can cut and shape them before baking. The space used to warm the frozen materials is the same room that was once used to rise bread dough. Once the materials have been warmed, cut, and prepared for baking, they are put in an oven where they are “baked” at 350° F. What comes out is a composite of epoxy resin and carbon fiber. The finished product is known simply as carbon fiber and is valued for its strength and lightweight.

When done appropriately carbon fiber is stronger than steel and weighs next to nothing. Carbon fiber doesn’t have an unpleasant smell, or much of any scent for that matter. So even though the delicious scent of rosemary is gone, at least there won’t be any gross chemical smells to replace it. (Only the city dump, but that’s another story.)

Mad Fiber is a relatively new company. “Relatively” meaning that they have been hard at work in creating their company and fine-tuning their product for nearly two years, but are yet to release their product to the public. I was told that their brand of carbon fiber bike wheels should be available for purchase within the next month or so. Mad Fiber is also as yet to set up a website for their product, and thus will remain a bit of an Internet mystery for the time being.

The company consists of four guys that love to build and create; all of them are engineers. They are quite friendly and making out to be great neighbors to the Essential Bakery Cafe. Rick, Russ, Max, and James often stop into the EBC to grab some coffee before they head to work next door. It is always a pleasure to see them. Welcome to the neighborhood, Mad Fiber, we’re glad to have you.