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I recently got some Merz ones in Ti, super nice, as you can imagine. I don't see them on his ebay store at the moment though, so that probably means he's sold out.

BITD Jim made them in 7075 T6 aluminum alloy, and they held up for very long miles. I think he said his friend toured 15,000+ miles on them, fully loaded. His friend was a big Cat.2 racer too, so probably not soft-pedaling.

I suggested to Jim that he make them from hexagonal stock, so no internal allen socket needed for mounting them to the spider, but he thought (and I agree) that would be ugly. So he broached the little socket down in there, the way God intended (or Tullio... same difference).

I also not too long ago bought a set of Stronglight Mygal bolts. I think I found them in England or Europe, Spa Cycles maybe? Not "NOS", they were still a currently-made product I believe, at least a couple years ago anyway. Let me know if interested and I'll try to find out where I got them. Unfortunately they won't work with Campy chainrings that have a 10 mm hole for the chainring bolts, because the Mygal bolt heads are 10 mm diameter, and fall right through the 10 mm holes. But just about everyone else's granny rings have 8 mm holes, so Mygal bolts are a good economical choice if you don't mind using those rings.

In fact if you use Campy bolts with those rings with the 8 mm holes, you either have to drill out the chainring holes to 10 mm, or remove the raised lip doodad on the Campy bolts that fits inside the 10 mm hole. Here's my pic of one of my Campy bolts where I removed the lip, next to an original bolt with lip intact:


Jim's Ti bolts are faithful reproductions of the Campy #818 bolts, including the 10 mm lip. I had him make mine in the no-lip style, because I like granny rings with 8 mm holes. For one thing, smaller holes lets you get away with using a smaller ring on a given bolt circle diameter. For example on the Campy Record "factory" triple with the 100 mm BCD, Jim Merz felt you couldn't go smaller than a 31t granny. But I made mine in 30t, and there's still enough "meat" between the teeth and the bolt hole, because of the hole being smaller. Then I made one in 29t, using 6 mm bolts, and of course 6 mm holes in the granny, just to get that one silly tooth smaller. 30t really is the most beautiful though IMHO, since 30 divides by 5, so it's symmetrical on a 5-bolt spider. Not that anyone will notice.

Other choices include Ofmega/Avocet granny ring bolts, maybe just as unobtainable as original Campy bolts, but if you can find some, they work perfectly. Bob Freeman also made some from generic Shoulder bolts and generic aluminum spacers he got from McMaster-Carr. There was a single lathe-turning operation needed on the bolt heads, but no allen-socket broaching or tiny inside threads like on the Campy parts, and the aluminum spacers were plug'n'play. Let me know if you need more details, like part numbers, I might be able to dig that up.

I can confirm the Campy spacer is 11.0 mm, and it was intended for ancient 5-speed (wide) chains, so you can go narrower if you use narrow chains. The Mygal spacers are 10.5 mm. 7/16" spacers from McMaster are 11.1 mm, close enough.

Mark B