Channing Hammond has been building objects by hand since he was a boy. Starting with mini bikes and go-karts, he got a taste for engineering and creating that was nurtured by his family. He immersed himself into metal construction at his father’s fabrication shop, watching his father build custom race cars from the ground up. His family are all major figures on the Bonneville land speed racing scene, having broken a record of over 316mph on the Utah salt flats in a car Channing co-designed and built with his father. Both of his parents as well as he and his sister are members of the Bonneville 200mph and 300mph club, all for having achieved those speeds in their custom built car.

Channing found his true calling and greatest passion as a teenager in 1987 when he rode his first mountain bike, a Raleigh, into the back country of Santa Barbara and camped out. It was long before pannier racks were prevalent and mountain bike camping trips were as common as they are today. It wasn’t as easy going as it was now, but he was hooked. He has been riding into those mountains weekly for the past twenty-five years.

In 1996, Channing founded Old Man Mountain Products which revolutionized off-road bike touring through the creation of a pannier rack system that can be easily modified to fit any bike frame. The company, named after Channing’s favorite mountain in the Los Padres National Forest above Santa Barbara, became the benchmark for quality and innovation in the category.

Channing sold his stake in the company in 2016, but Old Man Mountain continues to thrive on the basis of Channing’s sturdy, ergonomic designs, which come with a lifetime warranty.

Channing built his first aluminum mountain bike in 2000, and in 2006 he won Best Aluminum Frame at the North American Handmade Bicycle Show. In 2008, he entered an innovative design, the Frequent Flyer, in Shimano’s Alpine Group Builder Challenge and came away with the top prize.

Over the next few years, while continuing to create bespoke custom bikes for select clients, he returned to race cars. As a design and fabrication consultant, he contributed to the Pilgrim Stubbs diesel powered Bonneville streamliner built at Maxwell Industries in Ventura, California. Following that successful build, Channing worked on a revolutionary, from the ground up car design for architect David Martin of A.C. Martin. These remarkable projects established HammondMade as a premier fabrication studio specializing in aluminum construction.

In 2026, Channing has returned full time to his true love, mountain bikes. His new line integrates frame geometry and components with a focus on utility at every turn. Unlike accessory brands that adapt to existing frames, Hammond Made designs offer complete bicycle systems. Every bike Channing creates is meant to be an “all-day bike,” an intentionally built platform that balances comfort, performance and utility whether they are used by touring cyclists, urban commuters or any rider who relies on their bike each and every day. Channing will present Hammond Made’s debut collection at the 2026 MADE Show in Portland, showcasing the fully integrated solutions he has devised over decades of cross-disciplinary expertise in cycling, fabrication and auto racing. With a rider centric creative vision and a commitment to timeless craftsmanship, Hammond Made will redefine what is possible when performance and practicality are thoughtfully blended.

As he does in all of his builds, Channing uses CAD design from the SolidWorks platform, which allows him the freedom to pursue his most novel ideas.

“Aluminum is the most sustainable and widely available material we have. It is a wonder metal, it’s strong, easy to manipulate and has a broad ability to be turned into anything you can imagine. There is a reason why airplanes are made of aluminum,” Channing says. “It is the perfect Goldilocks material for creating and designing bicycles. It is and has always been a performance material, but for many years it was eclipsed by carbon fiber, when that material became popular in car design. I exclusively use aluminum because I want my bikes to be as light and strong as possible. I don’t find it hard to work with and don’t see any of the downsides that other builders seem to. Many small builders turn away from aluminum because it must be heat treated once the frame is complete to bring it back to its performance strength. At my fabrication studio, I have a huge oven to handle that. The oven also allows me to powder coat the frames, so my customers can choose virtually any color under the sun for their bespoke bicycles. At Hammond Made, I build compete bicycles from raw materials. I have complete control over the product from start to finish, which is precisely what a hand made bicycle should be. I give my customers their exact specs on a bicycle made exclusively for them, from start to finish. It is what I would want and what a handmade product by definition should be.”