Bikes of such minimal weight that the only way to create them is by spending endless hours sanding, polishing and paring away the excess grams.

>>> 6 ways to make your bike lighter

Meet Gustav

Gustav likes denim, punk and building the world’s lightest mountain bikes.

Gustav likes building the world’s lightest bikes.

But we’re not just talking about choosing the lightest production bikes on the market. No, we’re talking about spending hours sanding, scraping and getting rid of every superfluous gram, from every component. Weight weenieing that leaves behind machines of such exquisite minimalism that they look more art installations than offroad weapons.

In the world of the weight weeny, Gustav Gullholm is a bit of a legend when it comes to producing featherweight mountain bikes. Not content with creating just one world beating build, Gustav currently has two machines ready to take on the world.

Working in a bike shop in his native Sweden, Gustav has taken two already light frames; a Scott Scale hardtail and a Scott Spark RC full suspension frame and endowed them with his magic to produce bikes that almost defy belief.

How does a 16lb Scott Spark full suspension 29er sound?

Show me the weights already!

How does 6.22kg (13.71lb) for the Scale and 7.68kg (16.93lb) for the Spark sound?

To put that in context, the lower weight limit for Tour de France ROAD bikes is 6.8kg, so the Scale with its proper suspension fork and hydraulic brakes comes in at half a kilo lighter than that!

Or to put it another way, Scott’s own weights for the Scale and Spark are 8.7kg and 9.6kg respectively. Gustav would have to strap two and a half bags of sugar to his Scale to get it up to the weight of the production version!

Or a 13lb Scott Scale 29er hardtail?

What makes these bikes even more extraordinary is Gustav regularly rides and races them and barring a tyre choice or two everything is designed to be durable and practical. This is actually pretty rare in the world of properly light bikes where often parts are chosen for their weight above anything else. There aren’t any carbon fibre chainrings or brake rotors for a start.

Many of the parts listed come from pretty small and specialist brands such as Schmolke, Berk Composites, Tune, Extralite and Hopp Carbon Parts.

All produce beautifully crafted components made from pretty exotic materials and are, of course, not cheap. Exact costs for the build are unspecified, especially if you take into account the many hours of painstaking labour that goes into the preparation.

But to give some sort of idea to the costs involved the MCFK stem/Schmolke handlebar setup would cost £458 without the additional carbon bonding costs. Suffice to say neither bike was cheap.

Take a super-high end carbon handlebar and stem, get rid of the heavy bolts and bond together with more carbon.

How do you set about making a really light bike?

First off get rid of any paint, that stuff is heavy! Then look at every component and either put it on a diet if it’s the right part for the job by sanding, polishing or swapping bits for super light carbon. Anything deemed too heavy is swapped for the lightest, usable versions or, like the original parts, sprinkled with lots and lots of exotic trick bits.

Acros’ light and unique, hydraulically actuated derailleur was used for the Scale build. Gustav first stripped it down…

…and after countless man-hours of sanding, polishing and adding some extra carbon, this is what you’re left with.

First strip all the heavy paint and lacquer off the frames.

That’s actually a Fox 32 SC fork! Polished and lightened with Hopp Carbon Parts trick bits.

In their lightest guises, the bikes have some decidedly non-tready tyres. But these are swapped out for more practical rubber normally.

Just add plenty of carbon exotica.

Does this look comfy? Berk’s full carbon saddle has plenty of flex to keep things happy down below.

Don’t think they can’t be ridden properly. Here’s Gustav killing it on the Spark.

But Gustav isn’t resting on his laurels with just having two super light builds. He’s currently lavishing his time and energy on a Scott Genius that apparently will have some pretty special design features. To keep up with his projects, give his Instagram a follow.

If you’re interested in what it takes to create the lightest 29ers in the world, check out the complete spec sheets above.