Building Titanium and Carbon-Titanium Bikes in the USA for 28 Years
U.S. Built Custom Bicycles in Titanium and Titanium-Carbon Mix
This is Robert’s new Sola SL 007, a mountain tandem perfect for the Hawaiian back roads and trails Robert wants to explore. The final build looks great.
He says:
I finally got all the parts for my tandem and put it together on the weekend. Took it for it’s maiden voyage today on a short ride here in Maui. It is perfect. Thank you again.
Now I can plan my next project…
Speak soon
Robert
The Queen of the Classics, the Hell of the North, the Paris-Roubaix “road” race from the suburbs north of Paris over the famed cobbles of northern France and into the velodrome at Roubaix takes place this Sunday, and we can’t help but think (mostly because our own Rob Vandermark is there riding the course on Saturday) that titanium makes a lot more sense for a cobbles bike than carbon fiber.
Carbon fiber is great at being light and stiff, but it’s no mystery why many of the big bike companies put elastomers or pivots in their rough road bikes, because carbon fiber doesn’t absorb the bigger impacts as well as a more compliant material, like titanium.
Here’s Rob’s bike with Paris in the background. Look for more photos from his trip over the pavé in the weeks ahead.
This is Adam’s Sola SLX 29er. We built it with Ed and the crew at Web Cyclery in Bend, OR. A bead-blasted decal and new XTR Di2 keep this bike clean and simple, a really nice build. Thanks for working with us, Adam!
He says:
Thank you Seven! Everything is done except the final stem cutting. Notice the wires coming out of the steerer tube. Thank you so much for a very professional and pleasant experience. I will enjoy this bike for many, many years to come!
Thank you,
Adam
P.S Look for it at Sea Otter in the Pro Men’s field!
The Big Ideas, as a series, is about this whole bike building project we embarked on in 1997 and the foundational ideas that make what we do possible. The first installment was about Single-Piece Flow (SPF). The second installment was about Just-in-Time manufacturing (JIT).
This week we explore the 5 Elements of Customization.
It is all well and good to tell someone you can build their ultimate bike, but if they don’t have the vocabulary to tell you what that bike should look like, you’re no closer to that bike existing than you were before you met them. The 5 Elements give riders a useful way to think about customization.
The 5 Elements are the language of Single-Piece Flow on the bike shop floor.
1) Fit & Geometry – Think of the upper half of the bike, the points where you touch the bike, saddle height, set back, reach, bar height. These are the angles and centimeters that address different riders’ size, proportions, age, style and health (injuries). We address these, at the shop, through a bike fitting, and then follow up with body measurements that allow us to consider that fit in terms of your new frame’s geometry.
2) Handling and Performance – Think of the lower half of the bike. This is where we fine tune for rider weight, comfort, handling and riding conditions. Bottom bracket drop, fork rake, chainstay length, all these things affect how the bike feels. If you tell us you want your bike to be stable or quick handling, we can produce those characteristics through fine tuning of handling and performance features.
3) Tubing & Materials – We work in steel, titanium, and Ti/carbon mix. We start from the beginning when designing a bike for you, choosing a material that speaks to the kind of riding you do, then we go further, picking a tube set, in that material(s), that matches your specific preferences for stiffness and/or comfort, then we go further still, refining your rider-specific tube set through tube butting processes to accomplish the most personalized on-bike experience available from any custom builder, anywhere.
4) Options – Brake types, rack and fender mounts, decal colors and placement, paint, cable-routing, couplers, chain or belt drive component optimization, the configurations and permutations are close to infinite. This is how you dial the bike in. This is how you meet ALL your goals for your new bike, without compromise.
5)The Future – This is how we make our design as durable as our materials. We plan for the rider’s aspirations. Racing? Touring? Commuting? How does the bike age with the rider’s body? Is it adaptable? How do we keep the bike useful for the rest of the rider’s life?
You don’t have to be a bike designer to collaborate with us on the design of your new bike. You just need to be able to express your preferences in simple terms and let us map them onto the 5 Elements of Customization.
Every new bike purchase is, in a very real way, a design challenge, engineering the best possible solution for the type of riding you want to do. How you address that challenge can vary wildly, from choosing an off-the-shelf bike that already does most of what you want it to do, to building a fully custom bike.
When we think of a new bike at Seven, we start our own design process with material choice. What frame material makes the most sense? Steel has a unique ride feel, bright and lively, comfortable. In the hands of a good builder, steel can be light, too. But titanium can be light and just as comfortable. It won’t corrode, will survive better in a crash, can be repaired. In a word, it is durable. And carbon fiber, which is even lighter (in most cases) and stiffer. It dampens vibration well, but is not generally as durable as titanium or steel, nor as naturally comfortable.
We think it’s important to start at the beginning, with frame material, rather than jump forward to decisions based on component spec or features. The riders we talk with every day know what they want their bike to do. Why not choose the material that does those things best, rather than settling for a bike retro-fitted to do them.
As an example, many carbon fiber road bikes have some sort of impact dampening system built in, something to take the edge off, either an elastomer insert or a suspension pivot. What this suggests is that the base frame material wasn’t the best choice for the purpose, a more compliant material like steel or titanium made more sense.
We also know that it is possible to get benefit from multiple frame materials, which is why we build mixed material bikes like our 622 XX. Here again, we try to take a holistic approach, matching the materials to the purpose from the beginning of the design, instead of engineering ways to overcome a material’s weaknesses. The 622 XX uses frame material to incorporate the stiffness and lightness of carbon fiber with the compliance and structural strength of titanium. It looks pretty good, too.
When you take a holistic approach to bike design, you work forward from the frame material’s capabilities, rather than working backwards from its limitations. This is what we try to do, with every bike.