philbob57

Remember, this strategy predates big cassettes by decades. Modern bikes have 9-12 speeds closely spaced. It's a lot easier to find a gear that allows your desired cadence AND get fast highs and low lows with today's cassettes than with 3-4-5-6 speed freewheels. Even with 6 or 7 speeds, you can have only 2 of high highs, low lows, and close spacing. My top is 92 GI with 14-28 and 45/42/28, but I'm 78, and I rarely get even to that gear.

Also, note that it's not the difference between the number of teeth from cog to cog and ring to ring; it's the percentage jump or drop. If you choose chain rings that are N% apart, the freewheel cogs should be 2n% apart. I use 7% and 14%, and it works for me. YMMV. The granny gear is 28. I've only use it on the 3 biggest/inner freewheel cogs, and that keeps me within my rder's chain wrap limits.

RCMoeur 

I will have owned my Rans Nimbus recumbent for 40 years this coming December. I've used it for flat land commuting, touring up steep mountain highways, and even a 24-hour endurance ride with over 10,000 feet of climbing*.



I've always had it set up as a half-step + granny, and from the early 1990s until recently with the following gearing. The shifters are Suntour friction ratchet barcons conveniently located in the ends of the hi-rise handlebars, so double shifts are a breeze. The 14-38 freewheel is a custom build on a 6-speed Perfect body back when sprocket boards were still commonly available and the 38 tooth Suntour cog was the biggest on the market at the time. The 24-38 was nice on long hard climbs because you can't stand n' stomp on a recumbent, and being able to spin even on steep uphills was nice, especially with a full load front & rear.




(Yes, I know two decimal places is absurd for speed calculations, but it's what my spreadsheet shows and I can't find the password for the locked cells.)

In 2021, I decided to change the freewheel to a 14-32 6 speed. Although this meant losing that wonderful big ol' 38, the Hyperglide tooth profile made shifting a little less unpredictable and a lot quieter. I also realized I was using the 14 cog only once every 3rd blue moon or so, so I reduced the chainrings from 46-42-24 to 41-38-24, using a bike swap BMX ring for the 41. Pay no attention to the "patina" - the freewheel works just fine, and that's what I need.




If I need to go faster than 26 mph (41-14 at 110 rpm), I just coast and enjoy the ride. I think I'll keep it this way for a while.

The chain is a 210-link Sedisport with about 10,000 miles and zero measurable wear. Spending most of its time high above the dirt and only going through the sprockets half as often seems to be good for its longevity. I still pull and re-wax the chain every 500 miles or so.

Hoping I get at least another 10,000+ miles out of this bike and its half-steppedness. And I put 25 more miles on it just last night.


*Overall, it felt like sitting in an office chair for 24 hours straight while pedaling, but a small tag on the back of the waistband of my shorts moved a tiny amount back and forth each pedal stroke and rubbed bare skin. On a normal ride, this would have been inconsequential, but after 20+ hours felt like a lag screw being slowly driven into my back.

RCMoeur 

I think I have three hoarded curated Suntour 13-30 freewheels, two with some miles but still in great non-skipping shape, and one NIB. But you said "cassette", so you may indeed be out of 13-30 luck.

steelbikeguy

I've still got 3 HG-50 cassettes of the 13-30 7 speed type that are NIB, so that will cover me for a number years.

There is always the fallback position of just using crossover gearing, which has its own advantages. I've run it as 46-36-26 with a 7 speed 13-26, which does avoid the issue of moving the chain from the 26T chainring to the 46T and back. It was always a bit risky and required some care. The 46-36-26 required almost no care when shifting between rings.

Steve in Peoria

Classtime 

Crossing the chain on my Trek 620 was no big deal. 5 Speed helps. And also the long chain stays. But I was surprised how quiet and smooth big-big and middle-little were. The 7 speed cassette could be built with 9 or 10 speed spacers for an Ultra 7.

tcs

Ah, half-step. Been a long-o time-o since I ran half-step.

ShannonM

Half-step + granny is also good for sport-touring bikes.

For example, my 1985 League Fuji, with 45/42/30 x 14-16-18-20-23-26:

The bicycle:


The drivetrain:

Deore MT-60 crank, Suntour ARx front / Suntour Superbe rear, Suntour Pro-Compe freewheel.

Gear chart, without the granny, so that the half steps can be seen:



The 30T granny
gets me three more gears on the low end, one a half step down from the 42/26. With the Rivendell Silver shifters, the double / double shift is not difficult, so long as I've got a couple of seconds to do it.


This my most favorite gearing I've ever had on a bicycle.

The 42/45 half-step shifts really fast and easy... almost as slick as the rear, which is saying a lot, as the Superbe is one of the best-shifting derailleurs I've ever used. The Riv shifters help, of course... they're about as perfect a downtube friction shift lever as has ever been made. (Simplex retrofrictions are, IMHO, the only other contenders.) The shift up from the granny to the middle ring is slow and can't be done under much load, but given the conditions under which I make that shift, that doesn't really matter.

I love the ~7% spacing. Especially when cruising on the flats. I live on the coast, so there's always wind, and it's always changing. A lot of the time, it's enough to just shift the front up or down, leaving the rear in the same cog. The 18 and 16 cogs see a lot of this.

The shift pattern is not annoying at all. Mostly because, just as with a crossover, I don't (and almost nobody else does) sh.ft up through every gear from a stop. Bicycles aren't cars. What I do is to start out usually in the middle ring in a lowish gear, like the 42/20. Once I'm out of the neighborhood and actually riding, I start shifting up. When I'm at pace, only then do the half steps matter, so that's usually when I shift the front. There aren't as many double shifts as I'd thought there would be, and they're not hard to do, even with downtube levers. With bar-ends or brifters, it'd be too easy to mention. And crossovers also require double shifts when you shift the front anyway.

Bottom line, I like it a lot. And it's not hard to do. There's even a 9 speed Shimano cassette (12-36, I think) that works with a 45/42 or 42/39 on 130 BCD cranks. Many of the new 11 and 12 speed giant pizza cassettes also work, if you really wanna let your gear phreak phlag phly! (One of the reason half-steps died after the 7-speed era was that rear cogs couldn't get bigger than 32-34 or so, so that you couldn't keep the even progression necessary once they added more cogs to the clusters.)

--Shannon

SuperLJ

I read too much Frank Berto in my youth, so I’ve got a couple of bikes set up with half-step + granny. I agree with him that it probably makes the most sense for loaded touring. This is 48-44-24 with a 13-30 six-speed freewheel:



Because why not, I also set up a sport tourer with it. IIRC, 50-47-28 with a 13-28 seven-speed freewheel. Fun, but the steps are almost too close together:

ShannonM

Both of your bikes are rad. That Heron Touring is the business, and quite the rare bird.

The 50/47/28 x 13-28 on the Trek is probably in the same 7-8% range as the 45/42/30 x 14-26 on my Fuji, no? I really like the closeness of the gears, especially in the midrange. What is it that makes you feel that yours are "almost too close together?"

--Shannon

RCMoeur 

One cannot read too much Frank Berto.

rustystrings61 

How about half-step + granny inspired gearing? I'm currently running the stock 13-15-17-19-21-24-28 cassette that came with the rear wheel on a donor bike, mostly because I haven't yet acquired a rear derailleur with sufficient take-up that will index with the RX-100 bar end shifters - but the chainrings are 30/44/48, and while the steps aren't always even, it still feels like I'm getting nice graduations of gearing as I go.

RCMoeur 

Even though I am rather busy this morning with several clients and tasks, of course I had to plug this into my sheet / app to see how it lines up (doesn't everybody?) And if you had a 45 middle ring, it'd be nearly perfect.

ShannonM

Sweet, sweet bike!

Switch the 44T middle ring for a 45, and you've got a really nice half-step. 7-8% steps from 43 to 100 gear inches, and then the 30T granny gets you down to 29.

The 44 gives two duplicates (44x19 / 48x21 and 44x17 / 48x19) right in the middle of the range. Which is where I find I'm most likely to use all of the half-step gears. With my setup, as shown above, I'm always moving between the 42x20, 45x20, 42x18, 45x18, and 42x16. Having duplicates in that area would annoy the heck out of me.

45t rings are easy to find. I think I paid 25 bucks on Amazon.

--Shannon

steelbikeguy

A superficial check of the numbers shows that the step from the 17 to 19 is 1.118, or a 12% increase.
The change from the 44 to 48 is 1.091, or 9.1%.
In a proper half-step, the change between the rings would be the square root of the step between the rear cogs. In this example, that would be the square root of 1.118, or 1.057.
If you keep the 44T middle ring, that would give you a 46 1/2 tooth big ring. Those are hard to find, so maybe just go with a 47 tooth ring.

Steve in Peoria

RCMoeur 

You mean people don't have a bunch of 45 tooth rings in their Magic Box O' Chainrings?

(and 110 BCD 45s seem more common than 47s, at least in my experience...)

On my recumbent, one reason I didn't switch freewheels was I didn't have the correct 3-tooth-gap chainrings at that time for the new freewheel. Once I picked up the 41 tooth for $5 at the Tucson swap, though, I'd run out of excuses.

SuperLJ

Thanks for the nice compliment. There’s a Heron Touring frame on the online auction site right now. The guy is asking almost double what I paid for mine new in 2001. I doubt he’ll get it - but who knows?

I just meant that the 7-8% between steps that you quote is probably about as small as would be a useful. Anything closer and you’ll hardy notice the difference between the steps. I only set it up that way as kind of an experiment to see what a tight half-step would feel like. (The bike came with a triple crank and I had most of the parts already.)

RCMoeur 

Actually, a setup like this works well if you look at it as "standard adjustments on the right, fine adjustments on the left."

SuperLJ

Except for those times when the next lower or higher gear requires a double shift. I’ve had at least one bike around with half-step gearing for 40 years or more. I really like it!

estasnyc

Reading all this has intrigued me. I'm looking to dip my toe in these waters but am unsure about some details.

Is there anything so unique with either half-step or half-step with granny gearing that demands any kind of special front derailleur?

I have a 42-teeth chainring that I can swap in for a 53 for a 42/39 configuration.

The cassette is a Shimano 11-30 9-speed that's currently set up as 13,14-16-18-20-23-26-30 "eight-of-nine" but can be reconfigured to be 12,14-16-18-20-23-26-30.

(I'm using the dashes to indicate those cogs that are riveted together.)

Not the perfect set up, because I'd like to have something in the neighborhood of 100 gear-inches, but this would be an experiment I can do immediately to see if I like it.

smontanaro 

I currently have one bike with (semi-)functioning half-step gearing, my early 60s Frejus Tour de France. I have another in-the-works, a mid 50s Automoto Champion du Monde. The problem I find with this (both have period-correct Stronglight steel cottered cranks with 47-50ish rings) is just just about any shift is a double shift. It seems rare that I just need to toggle back and forth between the two front rings. Doesn't that bug the heck out of people?

RCMoeur 

YES. You should not use a mountain bike front derailleur designed for a standard triple chainring, as the cage design on the inside typically curves downward much more than the outer cage. This is great with a 10 or 12-tooth outer-middle chainring difference, but will hit the middle chainring when shifting to the outer on a 3-5 tooth difference setup (don't ask me how I know these things...) A road-type front derailleur where the inner and outer cages have similar curvature, or an older (pre-Hyperglide/Superglide) front derailleur will generally work with a half-step, but check it before committing.

Sierra

I usually just shift the back(full steps). The front is just used for fine tuning if needed(half steps).

RCMoeur 

Since I had the Box O' Derailleurs out for the "show us your derailleur collection" thread, I thought I'd take a couple photos to illustrate my point above.

Good for half-step - inside cage doesn't droop much:



Not good for half-step - droopy inside cage will hit middle chainring:

estasnyc

So half-step plus granny triples will be highly finicky when it comes to the choice of a triple FD but half-step doubles will be more tolerant with that of a double FD?

I do see what you mean about the clearance though. You have to make sure that the FD never comes in contact with ANY chainring while shifting and can't take it for granted that you can place it close to the large chainring as you normally would.

I guess I'll find out first-hand when I change out the large chainring being that I now already have everything I'll need to use.

I'm still not completely clear about the choice of an FD to use with a half-step plus granny. Might you use a double FD for this special case or a road triple FD instead of a mountain bike triple?

steelbikeguy

On my touring bike, I do most shifts on the rear. The front gets used when I'm bothering to optimize things, which is more typical of climbing steady inclines or riding into the wind.

OTOH, I used to have one bike set up with a 13-26 six speed freewheel and 39-52 tooth chainrings (I think).
It was a "one and a half step" system, and I frequently made double shifts on it. I was good at moving both levers at the same time (with one hand, of course), so it wasn't really a problem. Part of the trick is having shift levers that don't require much force, which is not the case for some of my Campy shifters. I think I was using a short cage SunTour rear derailleur on that bike, and it was relatively precise and didn't need much overshifting. The SunTour Cyclone GT on my touring bike needs more attention to overshifting and getting the position correct.

Steve in Peoria