The Bilenky Cycle Works is at the end of a dead-end street in Olney in a shabby brick building that once housed a machine shop. There is no sign; only a street number spray-painted on a foreboding steel door.

Inside, in a cramped, cluttered office, tethered to a telephone, is the company's founder, Stephen Bilenky, 50, a short, bustling man whose eyes are framed by wire-rim spectacles and whose face is anchored by an Old Testament beard. You can imagine him traveling to Max Yasgur's farm 35 years ago in a VW bus painted with psychedelic flowers.

He and a crew of three build about 100 custom bikes a year - touring bikes for the adventure cyclist, elegant bikes for the sporting gentleman, cargo bikes for messengers, tandems, hybrid tandems that are part upright and part recumbent, ingenious bikes that uncouple and fit into a suitcase, and special-purpose bikes like no others in the world.

"We make the impossible possible," Bilenky says.

It takes him about 30 hours to build a bike, "not including the therapy" - the time he spends tending to each anxious buyer. To succeed, he's become an artist, with metal and with people.

"Each customer is an education," Bilenky says diplomatically. "Yet they all exhibit the same behavior. They don't want to be mainstream. They are anti-trendy. They are the sort of people who like cars with stick shifts and watches with hands. They appreciate traditional craftsmanship, classic aesthetics, and products that have stood the test of time."

They are also spending a considerable sum ($2,000 to $4,000 for a single; $3,500 to $7,000 for a tandem) for a unique bike, and they want it to be just so, "a total personal statement."

Bilenky's job is to gratify the fussy, to "cheerfully cater to whim and whimsy." A couple want a tandem with a frame that matches their differing heights? No problem. A customer wants a bike painted the same lurid purple as a beloved hot rod? Done.

The essential joy of Bilenky's work is problem-solving. He began early. At age 9, he was repairing the bikes of neighborhood children in his Rhawnhurst garage, aligning wheels with his chin. By 12, he was assembling Schwinns at a bike shop. Soon, he was a full-fledged mechanic. In high school, he managed the place. In his early 20s, he opened a bike shop in his dad's Oak Lane beauty salon.

When he wasn't selling and fixing bikes, he was studying them, especially fine European models, mixing and modifying parts, dreaming up improved designs. He became a connoisseur of threads, lugs and finishes.

After his freshman year at Penn State (he majored in agricultural engineering - "I always wanted to work with my hands"), he and some pals embarked on an "epic ride" to Canada. For the 1,300-mile trip, from Philadelphia to Montreal and back via New Brunswick and Maine, he created his own touring bike, a sturdy, durable, bolted-together Frankenstein. He came back inspired to build a high-performance commuter bike. The result: The Metro 5, which earned plaudits when it was introduced in 1984.

Bilenky, who commutes by bike from his home in Cheltenham, calls himself "a practical artist." He's a master of the difficult skill of bronze fillet brazing - "painting with a torch," he calls it - which enables him to fabricate seamless frames that look as though they were poured from a mold.

His bikes are made the old-fashioned way - from steel.

"With carbon bikes, the ride is dead. There's no transmission of vibration. Steel is real. It flexes. It has spring and resonates. It gives good road feel."

Bilenky's advertising is his reputation; business comes by word of mouth. The average wait for a bike: three months. Over the last 20 years, he has built 2,000 bikes, a third of them tandems. Like Constable and Picasso, he signs his work. It is, after all, "not just a bike."

"This is an instrument, a personal tool, but it's also mobile jewelry, a sculpture on wheels. It has to look pretty, too."