Hi All, There's a new blog post on the Rivendell site, about the tubing used on the AHH frames. It is advertised as dry reading- but personally I found it very interesting, maybe b/c like many here, I am a total bike nut. I think it's great that Grant decided to post it, even though he is wont to omit such details, being that he feels the brand of tubing used to build a frame is mostly unimportant.
But I just wanted to play devil's advocate here, WRT the main point of the post: I think Grant's analogy to the guy (who's getting a new wing added to his house) asking about the kind of wood a building contractor uses is flawed, because if a guy is paying really good money to a really well- respected home-building contractor, he's probably absolutely concerned about the kind of wood being used. I wouldn't know because I've never had a wing added to a house, but if I were going to, and I were going to hire the best contractor I could, I'd doubtless want to know what kind of lumber or other materials the builder planned to use, because I know that not all lumber is equal. Tools, maybe not... I probably woudn't care about the tools the builder uses- but that is definitely not the same as materials. I don't have to live with the tools the contractor uses, only he does. I would just have to live with the finished product. That being said I am aware that, among quality bicycle tube manufacturers, there is negligible difference in quality, and honestly, I don't really care too much about whether it's Tange, True Temper or Reynolds. However, if they were all the same, why would the respective manufacturers bother to brand their tubes at all? Of course they want to be proud of the quality of their tubes vs. the other guy's, and they want their tubes to be in demand. So, the question is, who do the tubing companies need to advertise to- the builder, or the rider? I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say that the rider of the bicycle, who may spend decades or a lifetime with a bicycle, is probably in a better position to worry about the quality of the tubes than the builder. The builder may braze the tubes together and certainly would be concerned about how easy the tubes are to work with, but ultimately the builder is done with the tubes as soon as the bike is out the door. The rider, on the other hand, gets to spend potentially quite a long time with a bike, recocheting over frost-heaves, being ambushed by stealth potholes on a rainy night, locking it to crowded bike racks, etc. If Grant's philosophy is taken to the extreme, then maybe most bicycle makers should leave off decals from their bikes too? I mean, among established, well-respected sellers of bicycle frames, there's negligible difference in bicycle quality right? In fact, you could say the same about frame geometry too- it's not important, because within a certain range of numbers, most well made bicycles are going to ride well enough. OK I'm definitlely going way overboard here, but only to try to make a point. Anyway, stepping away from the topic of tubing brands, and moving to tubing specs: If I'm buying a bike frame, new or used, I do feel that knowing the wall thicknesses used in the tubes is important. Not because of 'ride quality' per se, but because I have dented a fair number of bicycle frames in my day, and even inadvertenly rearranged the geometry on some, in what I would call reasonably normal use, and I really hate when that happens. One of the many reasons I bought my Bombadil was because it was advertised as having straight-gauge tubes. I have an old centurion with Tange #5 plain-gauge tubes too. I love that. I also have a really great touring bike that also has straight-gauge tubes, and if it did not, the TT would *definitely* have three distinct dents on it (if not worse) from a large boulder near Thunder Bay in Ontario, but instead it only has three paint gouges. As an aside: I remember a few years ago in the BMX world, Standard Byke Co. was the king. They were very vocal about the True Temper Platinum OX tubing used in their frames, which were built at Waterford at the time, and their frames were known for being far lighter than anything else on the market, yet just as strong- and at that time, there were some seriously overbuilt frames out there. It seems that the adoption of hyper-light aluminum and carbon fiber frame materials in the past few decades has pushed steel specs on normal, non-racing bike frames to its limits in terms of lightness, unfortunately at the expense of durability. One of the things I like about companies like Rivendell and Surly (and a lot of other new companies) is that they use decently durable tubes on their bikes, whereas it seems like much of the steel market is at either the extreme of .049" wall high-tensile steel super heavy, or the opposite extreme of .7/.4/.7mm superlight OS steel tubes. Anyway, apologies for the rambling post but I really enjoy reading Grant's more thought-provoking writings on bike stuff, and this latest one really got me thinking. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
