Originally Posted by Moe Zhoost

It has a small Silk decal on the fork.

Originally Posted by nlerner

Very nice, @AZORCH. My only quibble: Isn't that front fender kind of short? Did it get cut off at some point?

Originally Posted by AZORCH

No kidding? Would you mind posting a picture of the decal, please? I sure didn't know of a connection between Nishiki and Katakura Silk; if so, it opens up a whole 'nother intriguing conversation! Thanks for sharing that little factoid!

Originally Posted by AZORCH

I had a wild hair the other day. (I wonder if anyone else uses this phrase to mean that one is pursuing a sudden, compulsive, and possibly irrational idea...or is it something my Dad made up, along with a thousand and one other odd and personal colloquialisms?)

Anyway, wild hairs....I had one recently. The afternoon's task was to organize the bikes and parts and other cycling related detritus hanging about the place. One of those things literally hanging about is an 80's era Katakura Silk road bike. Not long after acquiring this one I realized I had become a member of a small and rather exclusive club of enthusiastic chrome Silk owners, one of whom bemoaned the fact that there was only room enough to fit a 700 x 25 tire/fender combo, and despite my proclivity to never take such statements of fact as gospel I never attempted to fit anything wider than a 25. And thus, much as I enjoy this bike, after a while I found myself riding the Silk less and less in favor of those bikes with wider tires. I even went so far as to put this bike up for sale a few months ago. (Thankfully, it never sold.)

So: The wild hair. As I stood staring at a row of bikes lining my ceiling, my gaze fell upon two that were side by side - the Silk and the elegant looking 650b Cycles Toussaint Velo-Routier. I have enjoyed the VR but unlike my Boulder, it never seems to "want" to go faster and I've been considering tearing it down, selling the frame, and using the kit to build up a 650b with a little more spirited ride. Out of curiosity, I pulled the wheel set from the two bikes and swapped in the 650b wheels on the Silk. I don't really know what I was thinking would happen, but I certainly wasn't imagining that they'd just pop right in place with plenty of spin room...but after removing the short reach Superbe brake calipers they did precisely that.

I thought what the heck is going on? This isn't supposed to happen. And certainly it shouldn't be that easy. I decided to see if there'd be adequate room for fenders, thinking that would be the deal breaker. But a rough placement made it very clear that I had ample room for the 650b x 38 tires and mud guards.

Which is how I found myself tearing down two otherwise perfectly functioning bikes, hanging one naked fork and frame, and transferring nearly the entire kit from it over to the other. Measuring spacing and lengths along the way I was surprised to find that I could achieve a very similar the fit and positioning as on my Boulder Brevet, which fits me perfectly. Although there are certainly differences between the two, the major points of contact relative to the rider and to bike frame geometry are essentially the same. (See illustration below for comparison. The Boulder geometry is indicated by the red line overlaying the photo of the Silk.) Toe overlap at the front fender on the Silk is minimal, and similar to the clearance on the Boulder.





As with all of my bikes, I've made some effort to research the background of the makers. There's not a lot of information available about Katakura Silk which I find peculiar because they were a major player, sometimes likened to a Japanese version of Raleigh. What information I could find was a little sketchy. But a couple of catalogs had been posted online and seemed to indicate that some models were built with sportif or randonneuring characteristics in mind.

As I indulged my wild hair, I thought it would be interesting to conduct a new online search for Katakura Silk. I hadn't done so in a couple of years and I came across a couple of nuggets I'd not discovered a few years ago.



Of particular interest to me is this catalog page from 1986 that features both sportif (Grand Sport) and Randonneuse models of Katakura Silk. The Randonneuse model is fitted with 650 x 38 tires! Although this version is designed for cantilever brakes and has posts to accommodate them - which my PX model does not - it didn't take a huge leap of faith for me to speculate that if Katakura was designing one model to fit 650b, perhaps other models could also accommodate that size as well. After all, why retool the whole line? (Yes, I'm prone to such unreasonable leaps of logic.)

Cycles Peugeot states that the French randonneur aesthetic was introduced to Japan in the 1960's, and certainly there has been a very enthusiastic following in the years since that time. As readers of Bicycle Quarterly know, the Japanese have taken this model, tailored it into a distinctly Japanese-taste randonneur, and brought about notable improvements such as the Rinko system of packing a bike for travel.

The nugget was found at the Cycles Grand Bois website where I discovered a couple of Katakura Silk bike restorations featured in their online gallery. The bike below was transformed from this:



Into this:



If I interpret the details correctly, this bike was restored for a Mr. Sekishima from Hiroshima in 2009. It's a very beautiful and tastefully elegant re-interpretation. Importantly, I found myself thinking how much better designed the Silk seemed for a Japanese-style randonneuse with fat tires than otherwise.

For the time being I am using dual pivot long reach Tektro R559 side pull calipers. Others have used these very successfully for 650b conversions, and if I decide to change to center-pulls I should have no problem finding someone to take the Tektro brakes off my hands. Otherwise, pretty much everything else transferred directly over from the VR.

All in all, this has been a relatively simple conversion. On a short test ride, the quality is typical of high volume/low pressure 650b, and if the frame responds on those tires as it did with the narrower 700c tires - i.e., if I can achieve a cushy, spirited ride - then I'll be very happy indeed. Aesthetically, I feel this bike is respectful of the Japanese spirit of randonneuring. This greatly appeals to me. Functionally, I'm hoping for a bike that meets my needs for comfort, spirit, and the occasional crappy road. Let's face it: If I could only have one bike ever, the Boulder is my bicycle. I'm good with that. But I love to experiment with my other rides, and I'm feeling like this will make the Katakura Silk a more ridable member of my bike stable, without any loss of the class it already has.

Originally Posted by nlerner

Seems like the right opportunity for this classic:

Originally Posted by nlerner

Seems like the right opportunity for this classic: