Show us your Titanium! - Ti and Stainless bikes

Isn’t the trick you take a shit old frame in a box, have a ‘riding holiday in the us’, bin the old frame and bring back your new frame in the box?

Poor @fredtc, you've aged him by years.

I bought a Paduano for my fortieth as a present to myself. Still have it but will sell it soon.

I am living in the seventh decade of my life. Which is scary shit.

That was last year.

Well, yes, but that is also known as tax evasion.

Makes sense are buying American frames in the UK. I was more comparing their actual asking prices than what it costs to buy in the UK.

I bought a Paduano for my fortieth as a present to myself. Still have it but will sell it soon.

Framesize?

They probably cost £4.5k, because it reflects the time, effort, and knowledge that goes into each one, but more importantly, because that’s what people are obviously willing to pay for them.

There are a huge amount of middle aged men (and women, but in much fewer numbers) out there these days willing to sink vast amounts of money in to having a very fancy custom bike. I know this first hand, because they pay my mortgage.

There is clearly demand for high caliber bikes at this price point, and I’m guessing Tom Sturdy saw a gap in the market for extremely high end, UK made custom ti bikes, and decided to fill that gap. Seemingly quite successfully too by the looks of things.

It’s also worth noting that the use of 3D printed tube junctions will add a huge amount of cost (but also enables a huge amount of customisation, and very specific geometries) Bastion use the same process, but with carbon main tubes and cost north of £5.5k for a frameset. (and are incredibly ugly to look at)

If you’re gonna compare Sturdy to other top tier ti builders, you need to find out how much they would charge for a frame with a full set of 3D printed parts like Sturdy use (which none of them do, cos it costs too much). Firefly/Moots etc only use this process for their dropouts currently as far as I’m aware.

Nice bike. If you think it’s worth the cost, then who cares what people on the internet think. I’m sure it will bring many more years of use than your average £10k S-Works Venge chopper waggon.

That’s the piece of info I was looking for. 3D printed Ti lugs. Didn’t realise that.

I think you could probably get all the bikes I’ve ever owned for that money. But yeah, I’ve got a bit of time to work out the answer to that question

Just going to preface what I am about to say with the fact I think Sturdy frames look great, and frame builders deserve to earn a good wage for the work they do.

Regarding 3D lugs, don't they make the frame builders life easier (no complex clusters to build), without offering any particular benefit to the rider? I'm not sure I would want to pay a premium for use of 3D lugs, unless there is some benefit I don't understand.

I don't know if they do, but you could make them stronger for less material if you did some modelling of the forces on the joints.

The main benefit I saw in the 3D junctions were reduced weight, increased stiffness and the ability to fine tune things to each individual rider to a higher degree. They also alloy for more complex shapes.

It definitely reduces the physical welding time for the builder but each 3D junction is unique to each customer so there's additional time spent designing them.

This was my litespeed Classic.

I always wanted a Ti ride and finally managed to build this. Was slightly underwhelmed by the ride.. Did feel somewhat ‘soft’ like my rear tire was flat. I know that is touted as a good thing, a Ti-thing but it felt odd to me.

Slightly big for me also - so sold on

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https://vimeo.com/66306325

Charge were printing with Ti-dust back in 2013

Ti bikes are notorious for cracking (why I will never buy one), especially at the welds, especially especially at the welds in high stress areas such as BB.

Building bikes in this way moves the welds to areas of the bike that are under much, much lower stress, and as such much less likely to crack.

I’m no expert, but yes, I’m sure the printed parts speed up the physical building of the frame, but would imagine the time saved in the workshop will be spent in front of a computer instead.

Don’t think I’ve posted this before, Seven Axiom SL

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Very nice! Would love to go eTap and straight forks on mine

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Big bikes! Do love a Seven.

Missed this. It was custom built so not exactly sure. It's approx a 58 cm in old money, I'll dig it out later and measure it. It does have a integrated seatpost though, so there is a limited range of adjustment. I still have two 10 mm ti spacers for it so it can go up. I think my centre of BB to top of the saddle height on it was 803 mm.

Whilst we are on the subject of large Ti bikes here is my Mosaic

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Large Ti bike stamp of approval

Gorgeous bike and view - are there any more details?

Yeah had it a few years now, custom geo, think the ST is about 62cm. Feels super stiff despite the large dimensions. Amazing ride quality. Only change is I had the fork/stem/post repainted to give it a bit of colour. View is looking west towards the Lake District from near the top of Hartside Pass in Cumbria :)

I've added some more detailed pics (including of the BB cluster) to my Current Project Thread

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