Show us your Titanium! - Ti and Stainless bikes

Mason do titanium, built in Italy though, rather than the UK.

Out of curiosity, why the UK stipulation?

I’d heard it was ok, But I read recently someone was waiting a long time for an anodised finish. I suspect he’s of the ‘you’ll get it when it’s right artisans’.
I see he has a number of frames that have been used for photo shoots in the sale. Definitely worth a call I would say.
I didn’t go for him in the end because it was mechanical routing or Di2 which I felt was too restrictive.

UK builder in no way a deal breaker, but less hassle with postage and possible returns/repairs if it cracks

It would be unlikely any of the geos of the frames they have in stock would fit. Scherrit was very keen on getting him a canyon until he realised none of the geos were 'perfect' so suggested custom

I recommend Burls. I rode about 4000 miles last year on my Burls and loved it so much I bought another!
His frames are actually built in Russia but all the sales and design is done here. Justin’s service is absolutely incredible.
I had a bad experience with Enigma; very insistent on trying to sell me what they wanted rather than what I wanted.
They told me that their basic designs with minor tweaks are made in China with limited options.
They couldn’t actually accommodate all my requirements even with their full custom program.
Gave up on them in the end and I’m glad I did as my Burls experiences have been some of the most satisfying purchases I’ve ever made.

http://www.waltlytitanium.com/

@Turkish If non UK isn't an issue and you trust Scherrit to handle a bit of quality check on CAD drawings then Waltly are the way to go. I've been delighted with mine and it is a fraction of the cost of any other custom Ti.

Tom Sturdy is producing by far the best quality Custom Ti frames one the UK at the moment.

I'll see what scherrit is recommending him first. I imagine all of the geo discussion will occur between scherrit and the builder

+1

I've been abusing my Burls Fixed since 2012 on a near daily basis and its still going strong. Must have done 30k + miles on it by now. Would buy another in a heartbeat should anything ever happen to it.

Also, Scherrit did my geo and like you say conversed with Justin on my behalf. Although I did chime in a few times.

He does full custom right? The website suggests semi custom, which sometimes means not really custom at all...

Yes. He goes as far as designing and 3D printing the tube junctions specific to each customer so he can get dimensions and angles exactly how he wants to avoid having to make Ti tubing do things it doesn’t really want to do.

This also means the welds are in much lower stressed areas of the frame, so the welds re less likely to crack, which is one of the big problems with titanium.

And he’s a really nice guy.

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I'll pass on the recommendations ! Do you paint frames for him?

Nope.
He leaves them raw. Painting titanium is pretty stupid. Paint doesn’t like sticking to titanium at all.

Was curious why you had so much knowledge of them. He definitely wants unpainted but i was trying to convince him sparkly candy fades are the way forward

The UK custom frame industry is pretty small, so we all know each other fairly well!

Which of these people have actually welded titanium before?

I haven't. Don't think my Lidl stick welder will do it.

Would like to do a lugged stainless build at some point.

We can design you custom Ti, building it is outsourced to the same place a lot of other people outsource it to, but means costs are relatively low, the sturdy stuff looks pretty fucking cool though.

Ben serotta didn’t think so...!;)

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Whos we? Or do you mean the collective forum 'we'

Would like to do a lugged stainless build at some point

1. Turkish
   

Looks most likely to be Burls because of short lead time and proven frames but I'll see what Sturdys lead time is. The build itself wont be exciting enough for a thread but I'll chuck a photo in here when its done. Cheers all

Me, but really my boss, we're up in Manchester which might mean visits in person are awkward but with what will be very good details from Scherrit that shouldn't be a problem. We're just starting out on the Ti frames but Dave (boss) had been building steel stuff for a few years, first Ti batch included the cool city bike a page or two back and a track frame which were waiting on doing some slightly mad anodising on, there's another batch in the works including a gravel bike and a 50th birthday hybrid with talks about some others. Message me if you're interested but completely understand going with people who've been going a while and already built a good reputation.

Without sounding rude, do you just outsource to Waltly? Definitely another to add to this list, do you have a brand name for it? Although, as this is my Dads sort of 'bike for life' I imagine he'll want to go with a well known, proven name. All the talk about people doing 10s of thousands of Km on Burls frame is an excellent selling point

Communication and trust are wayyyyyyyy more important in framebuilding game than any other stuff.