Maelochs

Anyway ... Unless @LarrySellerz shows up, I think this thread is finished .....

Atlas Shrugged

Here is the photo with captions.


Even if he could make two frames a day (which is less time than it takes to prepare and cook your thanksgiving turkey) from start to finish, including mitering, fork bending, fork assembly and welding, main triangle welding, rear triangle welding, welding of various braze-ons, frame assembly welding and finishing he has at least one quarter of a years production just hanging around the shop. Not including frames out for chrome, paint and shipping prep. No business could sustain itself that way. It’s all marketing BS. Probably safer to take this debate back to C&V and it’s acolytes.

That said, your Cinelli which you have posted many times is a very aesthetically beautiful bicycle.

3alarmer 

...so let me see if I understand ? You were a tool and die guy ? Or was it some other "precision metal working ? I need to know this to ask my next question, which will be how that possibly qualifies as a platform from which to judge something like frame building ? I mean, I've been a blacksmith and farrier doing production forge work for a while, back when I was floating around in various occupations. I can braze and I can weld. I have even done both using a forge (coal, not gas), instead of a torch. I even did a semester in college learning foundry casting, using sand molds.

I don't honestly get the comparison. Maybe you can enlighten me further on how your experiences as a precision metal worker translate to this other area of making stuff from steel. My limited experience with that stuff tells me that maybe you're not the best person to debunk Richard Sachs. But it's not something I've ever done, either tool and die machining, or bicycle frame manufacturing.

3alarmer 

...yeah, I'm just gonna ignore you here. When you get into this mode of quibbling over word meanings, when there's a charted curve for three different tires that gives you some of the values, our conversations never end well. You're welcome.

Atlas Shrugged

This is bordering on idiocy. I spent 4 years as an apprentice toolmaker followed up with 15 years as a lead hand in a custom fabrication shop,which specialized in precision metal products. Medical instruments, aerospace, military and astronomy equipment as well as molds and dies. Often our products required welding as part of manufacturing and assembly which I was involved in. You have absolutely no clue if you think that brazing some lugged tubes together in a jig is challenging at all.

Richard Sachs made very attractive frames to a discerning clientele which were beautifully finished but performed identically to others. As a frame builder gets more proficient he gets faster while retaining the same quality but the actual performance is identical. I find it bizarre on how gullible so many people are regarding frame builders, the input materials are identical as well as the assembly methods so the only differentiation is branding, finish and details which play no role in performance or reliability. Just look at these forums which has a frame building sub forum with over 50,000 posts, not a very rarefied group if you ask me.

Yan 

Tire choice is based on where you live. If you live in a place with butter smooth roads (China, Singapore, Middle East, etc), you can close your eyes and there will be no discernable difference in road feel between 21s and 32s. At that point you simply choose the lightest tire, which will be the thinner one. If you live in upstate NY, you need 35s

Jughed

Wow - all over a few mm’s and PSI.

Lookie heere:

The performance, speed, ride qualities… between a Huffy and a high end bike are fairly significant.

the difference between stock heavy alloy wheels and a light set of CF deeper section wheels, fairly significant.

Gator skins and Gp5000’’s - little less significant, but makes a difference.


Most of the other things people argue about - not real significant.

23,28, 32mm - yer talking minute differences in speed, and minimal comfort. Much of it is personal preference. Even steel vs aluminum vs CF, good versions of each - minimal differences.

105 to dura ace, aside from your wallet, for the average rifer - minimal differences.

yet people will argue to the bitter end about these minimal preferential differences.

Koyote

I recall this being covered in an earlier thread, and other posters provided ample evidence that Cinelli did indeed employ other workers during those years, and many of them laid hands on each frame -- which likely would've led to a higher quality, given what we know about specialization and division of labor. I would want the tubes mitered by a person who does mitering all day, since that's how a person gets really good at it. Ditto for the brazing, aligning, painting, etc. One can believe that a bike frame is somehow 'better' if it's produced in its entirety by one individual, but that's unlikely to be true in any objective sense. Hell, even Richard Sachs sends his frames to Joe Bell for painting. (And artists from Michelangelo to Rembrandt and countless others have used fabricators and assistants to help complete their works -- so even the notion of the 'lone artisan' is largely a myth.)
​​​​​​True, and enough reason to enjoy it. No need to make up a fictional backstory or pretend that it's something that it's not - such as lightweight in any meaningful sense.

Sy Reene

Probably most have seen this article.. but worth bringing out again. Each tire width, combined with each rider's weight, combined with each ridden surface type, would have their own ideal optimum inflation point.
SILCA BLOG PART 4B

wheelreason

I will run my cheapo 25s at 90+ PSIG on good roads until the day I die, and will defend anyone's right to ride whatever they want at whatever pressure they want for whatever reason they want.

RChung

I've had a few exchanges with Jan over the years, asking him about his test protocols and methods. Jan has interesting ideas but doesn't do good experiments or analysis. Nonetheless, sometimes his ideas turn out to be correct. I (occasionally) read Jan's stuff to get ideas but it's often necessary to replicate his experiments.

smd4

Thank you.

That’s not the caption from the original publication.

3alarmer 

...I don't think I said that, but I'm sorry you got that impression. What I said, I think, was that we all have differing experiences with regard to fabrication and construction of metals, and that neither your experience, nor my own, is especially suitable as a background for judging custom steel frame building.

...ahhh, I begin to understand now where you are coming from on this issue. Thank you. We will probably never agree on this point. I learned that from shoeing horses. But thanks for explaining it for me.

genejockey 

Wait! I was travelling! I didn't get to add MY $0.02!!!!

The 25s I run on 8 out of 9 bikes are a whole lot comfier at 90/95 F/R than the 23s I ran at 140 psi BITD, but the 28s on the Canyon are comfier and faster EVERY TIME. Given the state of some of the pavement I ride, I'm thinking of running 30s or 32s. I wanted to swap the 28s onto the Litespeed, to make it slightly comfier, but when they built that frame in 1995, they didn't leave room for anything larger than 25s. 28s rub the underside of the brakes.

3alarmer 

...I think the only reason I went to that source was because, for a long time, way back when, it was Mr Heine at BQ who was the most published voice on wider/ lower pressures/ faster (in the popular cycling literature of the time). It's kind of wild for me referencing that here, and seeing it shot down as "non-science" in the same thread that has strong opinions about how that's the correct approach.

3alarmer 

...

jonathanf2

I prefer 25c on my road bikes paired with 21mm internal rim wheels. My GP5k tires inflate closer to 27-28c with a slightly wider footprint, but without the added weight or sluggishness of actual 28c tires. I also prefer clinchers with lightweight TPU tubes, because they tend to be cheaper and easy to patch up. I've seen one too many road tubeless mishaps which required a car pick-up. For gravel I completely prefer wide tires and tubeless.

RChung

Sometimes broscience can be correct even if it's broscience. Jan has had so many interesting ideas over the years that we often laud him for the ideas that turned out to be right rather than the ones that turned out otherwise.

Atlas Shrugged

Ok you caught me.


This was the quote from the single frame builder responsible for Cinelli frames at the time.

smd4

It’s understandable if you haven’t seen it. It’s from an old bike magazine. It’s posted here in the forums.

But you would discount it out of hand either way.

seypat

Annnddddd there's a thread recently started about the ride of carbon wheels. Let's see where that thread goes in relation to this one.

rsbob 

”I’d rather fight than switch.”

”From my cold dead hands”

”Fugetaboutit”

smd4

Just got back from a ride. Deflated my tires to the minimum: 100 psi, down almost 1/3 from my usual pressure.

A noticeably “less crisp” ride. No thanks. Back to 140.

3alarmer 

.
...I thought about starting a thread about inflating my tires using helium. But every time I tried to type the OP, I started laughing hysterically at the sound of my squeaky voice.

Jughed

where I’m not sensitive to tires…

my carbon wheels vs the stock crap that came with the bike - night and day different. The bike is a completely different machine.