Originally Posted by
merziac
Yeah, apples and oranges IMO.
I think he saw the handwriting, his bi-plane was being copied by most others with many going to a cast version.
He tried to get them to cast his fancy version but the cost was untenable so he spun the unibrow up and the rest is fugly history.
I'm glad Grant was able to get them done on these, they compare to few others and that is sad.
Not sure how Andy got it done but am also very glad he did.
He got Long Shen to cast them and had an at the time wiz kid helping with the design and production of them, I believe that is who Tom tried to get as well.
Grant probably had clout with them later on where as Tom did not, early on when he needed it.
Just for ducks and to carry on the fork crown discussion on this cantilever brake thread, here is the fork crown of a late 1983/early 1984 “Montare Mountain Bike” which is when the split between Ritchey and Fisher was occurring (i.e., when Montare was a separate line before becoming a model in the Fisher Mountain Bike lineup in 1985). Note Ritchey sticker on fork blade. It appears to be an evolution of Ritchey’s earlier bi-plane model, on its way to the model adopted by Bridgestone (BTW my wife and I are original owners of 1992 XO-1s that Grant claimed carried the “Most Expensive Fork Crown in the World”).
