I don't want to clog another thread with info about my new bike by Brian Chapman, so I'm starting a new thread for it. Hope people don't mind that, and that it's not a real RBW topic.
It's RBW adjacent, I think, though. Beautiful lugged steel frames on plush 650B tires were headed for obscurity, but for the efforts of Grant Petersen and Jan Heine (who was very influenced by Grant) and some dedicated and talented builders. I also have to give a shout-out to Kirk Pacenti, whose Pari-Moto tires were a revelation, and whose fork crown and the Columbus fork blades he designed grace my new bike. We live in an embarrassment of riches when it comes to 650B tires, a stark contrast to when Grant took a giant risk and had some bikes built using that wheel size. I wish I could say the same for rims, but thank goodness for the good people at Velocity. I grew up riding about 100 kilometers from where Brian's home/workshop is, south of Providence, RI. I am very fond of Rhode Island and have many great memories from there. Brian's work speaks for itself. If you haven't seen his Flickr site, I highly encourage you to spend some time there. It is awesome to see his progress as a builder (and as a photographer of his work). My first request for a bike from him was rejected as "not in his swing zone." If you look through his work, you pretty quickly realize how wide his swing zone is, but I was asking for something that would have required a lot of effort on his part. It worked out for the best, though, as the bike that resulted from that process, while being what I asked for, in the inimitable words of Grant, wasn't what I wanted. My second request of Brian, which came following his restoration of a beautiful Raleigh, was that he do a similar restoration of my Fuji America. That bike hit a car, though, and while the frame wasn't visibly bent, the cracks in the paint made him understandably nervous about working on it. So, instead, he agreed to put me on the list to build a bike that is somewhat inspired by the Fuji, and two years later he nailed the brief and ever so much more so. Fuji advertised the America as "the ultimate touring bike". Brian raised that bar considerably. The bike is something of a "greatest hits collection" of all my favorite stuff from 50 years of building up bikes and riding them. Reynolds 753 frame tubes, Columbus fork blades, SunTour rear dropouts, Campagnolo brake levers (in carbon, no less), Shimano Dura Ace detailers and 9-speed bar end shifters, Sugino self-extracting crank bolts, Nitto handlebars and seat post. The setup is unapologetically exactly the same as my other bikes. I've dialed in a position that works for me in my current state and this is not the bike for exploring something else. The ride is sublime and honestly unlike anything else that I've ridden. The closest to it, in theory, is my Terraferma Corsa 650B. The steering geometry, though, is a slacker head angle and a bit more trail. Where it trounces the Terraferma (don't get me wrong, the Terraferma is a good bike....) is 1) despite using skinny, thin wall tubing, it doesn't feel like a noodle; and 2) the steering is the most intuitive and secure of any bike I've ridden. There's definitely a sense of liveliness, which I can feel as a slight sideways movement of the lower part of the bike, but that immediately translates into the sensation of it pushing the bike forward. I can only surmise it's what the rowers call "swing". Extra light tires and latex tubes (from Grand Bois) surely contribute to the smoothness of the ride. Ted Durant Milwaukee WI USA -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/382d9aae-55c2-4a6e-8981-83fbb88ff7f2n%40googlegroups.com.
