Richard Sachs hasn't used tubing decals for more than 20 years. I
don't know what kind of tubing he used for my frame--it just works,
and marvelously so.
—Eric Nwww.campyonly.com
On Feb 10, 2011, at 6:11 AM, newenglandbike
<[email protected]> wrote:
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.
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