Friday, November 25, 2011
over oversized lugs and the women who love them
as someone whose latest custom steel frame was built with columbus sp tubing, perhaps i am not the intended client-base for the newish over-oversized lugs and tubing for road bikes. i am however more curious than i should be. richard sachs lists the lugs and fd braze-on but no word on tubes or fork crown that i can find. llewellyn seems to have been on this for a while, but he couldn't be any farther away unless he starts building frames on the moon. not being a framebuilder, i don't really know how much variety of tubing there really is for these frames and how much tuning can be done. i would think that even the lightest gauges would be overkill on smaller frames, but i don't know first hand. i'm also not sure who's done enough of these frames to know the ins 'n outs--probably australia, again, but still wicked far. is the point light weight or extra rigidity? are there ever going to be matching fork crowns and enough tubing choices to make it worthwhile? we may never know the answers to these questions, but tune in next time for another exciting episode of bullshit or not?
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Ok, I'll bite: I'm pretty sure that Sachs has Columbus Spirit (and maybe XCr) tubes, fork crown, fork blades and pocket squares coming, not sure when. That being said, I have a frame here built from the new lugs and we used Columbus Life tubing - maybe it's too light for the hoi polloi to build with but we can handle it. For a fork we'll use an Enve 1.0 carbon fork as a steel fork just seems overkill in this application but ymmv.
ReplyDeleteIn a larger sense, so to speak, and if you're a big guy and must have lugs this could be a good way to go. But my take is that if you're a big guy and want a steel bike then maybe you should be looking at a a welded frame, non? For small and medium guys the standard OS steel tubing is hard to beat.
Good stuff here, yo, and thanks for posting, keep up the good work, etc.
you just wait another moment or two atmo...
ReplyDeletesteve: lugless construction does indeed make sense for over oversized tubes or funky shapes. if there may now be 3 standards for lugged construction, that makes me wonder if one of them has to go. not sure, just woolgathering, i guess. thanks for your feedback.
ReplyDeletesr. e-richie: so will it be a soup to nuts uber os package, i.e. lugs, tubes, crowns and stuff? 10 years from now is uber os the new standard or just another choice to take up idle time?
ReplyDeletethe blades are done and here.
ReplyDeletei am waiting for a crown design to become a hard copy.
tradition is always changing atmo.
http://www.e-yakimono.net/html/living-natl-treasures.htm
m. sachs, change frightens me, but i am looking forward to seeing the uber-neue uber-lugged frames. cheers.
ReplyDeletechange doesn't frighten you atmo.
ReplyDeleteit'll all be fine and we'll move forward.
we shall see, i suppose. i will drop you a line when i'm interesting.
ReplyDeleteBig bikes for big guys. Goodrich? Who else?
ReplyDelete+1 for a steel fork. Just for grins.
me, too. i'd like to know what one of these beasts would look like with a custom steel fork. if they look of a piece, i think i could live with one. my last custom was skinny-tubed columbus sp, so it would be a nice contrast.
Deleteand i'm not sure who has made one or more of these with the full-on over oversized lugs and stuff and not using only the big tubes as part of a welded frame. i'm on the lookout, though. afaik, sachs is not taking orders, so, it would be someone else. not sure what builders would be interested, either.
Delete