The Grip That Will Outlast You
On bronze bushings, dynamos, and a wooden knob I couldn't forget
The Mikros One crank handle has a wooden grip that rotates freely on a bronze bushing. The shape is unusual, not a standard ball, not a cylinder, something in between. Organic. Comfortable.
Two different memories shaped this component. One from fifty years ago. One from twenty years ago. Both surfaced during the design process, recognized rather than planned.
The Bronze Bushing: A Dynamo, Fifty Years Ago
Rotating grips need bearings. Most grinders use ball bearings, smooth initially, but they wear, develop play, get noisy, and can't be serviced. Sealed cartridge bearings are worse: when they fail, you replace the entire assembly or throw out the grinder.
I wanted something repairable. Something that would last lifetimes.
Bronze bushing. Bronze on steel. Simple, ancient, serviceable.
The decision came from a specific memory: my father repairing a dynamo when I was a boy, maybe fifty years ago now. He'd disassembled it completely, replaced the worn bronze bushings that supported the armature shaft, reassembled it. The dynamo worked for another decade.
He explained it to me then: bronze bushings wear slowly, run quietly, and when they eventually need replacement, you press in a new bushing. Simple. No special tools. No proprietary parts. Just basic machine shop work.
That lesson stayed with me. Build things that can be repaired, not replaced.
The wooden grip on the Mikros One rotates on a bronze bushing pressed into its core. In fifty years, if it develops play, you press in a new bushing. The grip itself might last centuries, it's just wood on a shaft. Even if it doesn't, you turn a new one on a lathe in an afternoon.
My father didn't talk about "right to repair" as a movement. To him, it was just normal. You owned your tools. You maintained them. You fixed them when they wore out. You passed them to your children.
The bronze bushing exists because of a dynamo repair fifty years ago and a father who taught me that well-made things last lifetimes if you build them to be serviced.
The Knob Shape: Trying Not to Copy Anyone
The shape took longer to resolve.
I didn't want a standard ball grip. Too common. Every grinder uses ball grips. I didn't want to copy competitors, not because of patent concerns, but because I don't like following. If everyone else does something one way, I'd rather find a different solution.
So I sketched. Iterated. Tried different profiles. Too angular felt wrong. Too spherical was derivative. I wanted something comfortable, distinctive, natural in the hand.
The shape evolved organically, slightly elongated, curved but not perfectly spherical, comfortable grip diameter, smooth transitions. I built a prototype, held it, refined it. Built another. Adjusted again.
At some point during this process, a memory surfaced.
A Tiny Porsche in Saint-Tropez
Twenty years ago, I was on holiday in Saint-Tropez with my son Oliver. We saw a 1952 Porsche 550 Spyder parked outside a café.
Tiny car. 1500cc flat-four engine making maybe 110 horsepower. Weighed 550kg. It beat cars with three times the displacement and twice the power through better design, lighter, more efficient, better engineered. Not brute force. Better thinking within tighter constraints.
I spent time looking at it with Oliver. The gear knob caught my attention. Wooden, shaped like an elongated egg, sitting perfectly in your palm. Simple. Purposeful. Distinctive.
When I was refining the grip shape for the Mikros One, that memory came back. The knob I'd designed, the one that evolved from trying not to copy anyone else, resembled that gear knob. Not exactly. But similar proportion, similar character, similar philosophy: comfort and distinction over convention.
I didn't set out to replicate the 550's gear knob. I set out to design something different from every other grinder. The resemblance emerged during iteration, and once I recognized it, the connection felt right.
The 550 represented what I admire in engineering: achieve more with less, win through better design, be distinctive without being unnecessarily complicated. The grip shape reflects that same approach, different because it solved the problem honestly, not because it followed what everyone else was doing.
I Forget My Crank, But Not Details Like That
I've lost grinder cranks twice. Misplaced them, spent time searching, been frustrated.
But I remember a gear knob on a Porsche I saw for maybe ten minutes twenty years ago. I remember my father's hands replacing bronze bushings in a dynamo fifty years ago.
That's how my m, those stay. The immediate practical things, less so.
The Mikros One's grip exists because:
- Bronze bushings are repairable (my father's dynamo, fifty years ago)
- I wanted a shape that didn't copy competitors (design principle)
- The shape I evolved resembled a gear knob I couldn't forget (recognition)
Two memories, two design elements, one component. Both emerged during honest problem-solving, not forced reference.
The Honest Position
The wooden grip with bronze bushing exists because:
- Rotating grips need bearings that will last and can be repaired (requirement)
- My father taught me fifty years ago that bronze bushings are serviceable for lifetimes (lesson)
- I wanted a distinctive shape that didn't follow other grinders (principle)
- The shape I developed recalled a gear knob from a tiny Porsche I saw with my son (memory)
Form follows function. Memory informs recognition. We don't invent connections—we acknowledge them when they surface during honest design work.
Bronze bushing because of a dynamo repair. Wooden knob shape because I refused to copy, then recognized what I'd made.
Built to last lifetimes. Repairable when it eventually needs it. Shaped by trying to be different and discovering afterward that different connected to something I admired.
The 550 Spyder beat bigger cars through better design within tighter constraints. The Mikros One tries to do the same: smaller, more efficient, more thoughtful than brute-force approaches.
I forget cranks. I don't forget engineering that matters.
