Seven – Page 95 – Seven Cycles

Fondo Manilla

Seven is lucky to send bikes all over the globe. Our international family is one we grow and make connections with, despite culture and language barriers. Recently, our Philippine partner, George Carag from VeloCity Cartimar/DaDa Sports, sent us a series of photos from the Fondo Manilla Anniversary Ride.

The Fondo Manila Team has been hosting rides and tours throughout the Alabang, Cavite, and Tagaytay areas. The team is always searching for new and innovative ways to spread the joy of cycling to revive the camaraderie and bonding brought by the collective passion of its enthusiasts. All riders are welcome to these fully supported rides.

In early March of this year, the team commemorated its one-year anniversary by hosting a weekend of cycling on the best roads of Baguio: the Fondo Manila Baguio Series. Baguio was the chosen venue for having the highest point in the Philippine highway system, making it a befitting location to literally celebrate Fondo’s “A Higher State of Cycling.”

A group of Seven Cycles bikes were present and participated on this beautiful three day journey. Seeing the bond that this ride created between people proud to ride our bikes makes an impression on us here in snowy Watertown, MA. The places our bikes get to see is a testament to our philosophy that custom is possibility: bikes have no barriers or borders.

Working with Titanium

We wrote about steel the other day, and how the accepted wisdom regarding steel tube sets simply doesn’t match the reality. Today, we want to address titanium. Interestingly, while riders have believed for years that the type of steel a frame is made from is supremely important (we agree), they have simultaneously assumed that titanium is just titanium, that it’s all the same.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Seven uses mainly US-milled, Cold Worked – Stress Relieved (CWSR) titanium in our custom frames. We do that because no other titanium available today has a longer fatigue life or higher tensile strength. We know that’s true because we have a fatigue tester here in our shop and regularly submit tubes to rigorous testing. Pushing materials to their breaking point is a great way of finding out how good they are, and our research indicates that the titanium we source is the strongest available and maintains that strength over significantly longer periods than the titanium available from mills in Asia.

We always want to use the best materials, because we want to build the best bikes, but we also have a commitment to lifetime warranties that prevents us from cutting corners with lower quality products. When you buy a custom Seven, you put your faith in us to produce a bike that will fit like a glove, corner on rails and last forever. American CWSR titanium allows us to repay your faith with a frame of uncompromising quality.

Belgianwerkx – Signature Mudhoney Cross Racer

New Seven partner shop, Belgianwerkx in Mequon, WI (just north of Milwaukee), wanted to do something special for their first floor demo bike. We think they succeeded. A steel Mudhoney, painted in their colors with Belgian flag accents, new HED Belgium rims, Cannondale crank, ENVE cockpit, the works. Nick Moroder, shop manager, said, “The handling is spot-on. SO responsive. And it’s unbelievably stiff for any bike, let alone just steel.”

Getting Real About Steel

For decades the conventional wisdom has held that certain steel tube sets, whether Reynolds or Columbus or True Temper, held magical, mystical properties that gave riders the exact ride feel and performance they were looking for. And while that may be true for some very specific riders, each of the legendary steel tube sets, whether Reynolds 853 or Columbus SL, is exactly that, just one tube set with a very specific diameter and wall thickness. Sometimes there is a choice of a second down tube, but that is the extent of the customizability of the tube choice. If you happened to be the perfect size match for the tube set, you were in luck, but if you were smaller, the frame you received might be far too stiff, or if you were larger, far too compliant.

At Seven, we have always built our frames from tubing specific to each rider. We take into account rider size, riding style, preferred road feel and general riding conditions. We may select a top tube or seat tube from one of the big steel tube set makers if it’s appropriate, or we may take raw steel tubing and butt it by hand, here in our factory, to craft the exact ride a customer is looking for. We butt and bend all our steel chain and seat stays in house. When the bike is custom, one size never fits all, and one tube set is never appropriate to every design.

This is the reality of building in steel, if you want a custom bike, one tuned for both performance and comfort. There is nothing wrong with the tube sets of legend, but it is true that each set is only a limited solution for a small subset of riders. When you get into custom bike building, we feel it is important to think more deeply about your materials, to see how they can best be applied in any design and to push back against convention, whenever necessary.

More about the Limited Edition Giro bike we created with our friends at Cascade Bicycle Studio here.

Love to Ride – The Photographers – Dave Chiu

Dave Chiu is one of those guys who is very hard to pin down. He is a hyper-talented photographer, as evidenced by this shot we used in our Love to Ride brochure, but to speak only about Dave’s photography is to ignore all the other things he does, including graphic design, web development, travel, high level racing and generally kicking ass a collaborator and friend.

In recent years he’s shot the Tour as well as a number of legendary domestic races like the Tour of Battenkill. You can check out some of the best of that work at his website. This picture of mad genius mechanic Matt Roy gives a tiny, intimate peek into the life of a pro wrench, prepping a race bike for his wife, Seven sponsored Mo Bruno Roy.