Beautiful fork rake

A few more: Fitz, Black Mountain Cycles by Falconer, Clockwork, a rare-ish bent ti fork by Black Sheep, Sachs.

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Always reliable Jack Taylor

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For me that rake starts too early.

I don’t like curved forks, on larger sizes when the legs seem to bend backwards relative to the headtube angle. I know it’s to reduce the rake, but it gives me a ‘I’ve crashed into a car’ vibe

Is this actually a thing, bending the forks backwards to reduce the rake? I always thought it was just an optical illusion.

You’ve taken the words right out my mouth, I had also always assumed a trick of the camera or a flaw in my eye.

yeah, I guess I assumed that was barrel-distortion in camera lenses, but...

Jack Hearne forks had a tiny rake just at the end near the dropout, I'll have a hunt for a pic....

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Here's mine in a shitty nds pic.... the frameset of which which I'm selling because low trail is not for me.

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Surely not. The bend is generally added to the tube when building a fork, isn't it? It would simply be a matter of employing a different bending jig to apply less bend to make a fork with less rake. Two different forks for the range of sizes was the norm, IIRC.

Fairly certain the blue bike has had a hit. If you zoom in on the head tube and fork and look across your screen, you can see that not even the rear edge of the blade is parallel, let alone the centre line.

That ain't no barrel distortion - look how close to round the wheels look; it's a proper bike pic, zoomed in from far.

The bend is generally added to the tube when building a fork, isn't it?

You can buy pre bent legs. That’s what I’d have to do as I don’t have a bender that’ll do legs.

You’re generally going to have to trim fork legs down though so it’s easy to adjust the rake by trimming them at the bottom rather than the top.

I guess if you wanted a long a2c for big tyres and guards out of you wanted to use a socket style dropout then you might not be able to trim the fork in that way.

I think if you were making forks on the regular you’d get a bender. It’s something I do pretty rarely so I’ve not invested.

Having another look at that frame, it's a bit on the flash side... Where the downtube and top tube meet the head tube it looks fillet brazed, but on the head tube side it looks lugged. Seat cluster looks rather nice too. Would be hugely surprised if the guy who built that frame thought such a bodgy-looking hack as bending the fork so it looks pranged was even an option.

deep into a wormhole... I guess it's this Chapman Cycles - this other bike from there looks pretty similar & the forks look nice and straight at the top to me - seems unlikely it was built with some weird backwards raked forks at the crown...

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actually you're right about the barrel distortion - the seatstays look pretty straight to me, so not that. the back wheel looks slightly closer to the wall, though, and the photo looks like it was taken on a level with the top of the seat (NDS brake lever is level or maybe even above, and NDS chainstay is much higher), so could still be some kind of optical illusion...

Is this your bike?

You can see the far fork leg in the picture, in front of the near fork leg. The fork isn’t straight on to the camera, it’s tilted

The only reason you can see any of the left leg is that the camera is above the height of the hubs. If the fork was turned to the right, the hub axle wouldn't line up so nicely with the vanishing point, and neither would the ends of the bars.

What's the name of the Italian style sloped shoulders with blended lugs?

That’s a good point yes

My favorite one, if anybody knows the builder let us know :)

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Semi sloping internal.

That looks like a Zeus 2000. Loads of similar by companies, like Haden. Took over from the fully sloping internal as a fashion statement early 1970's

Sloping crowns FTW

Perfection

Rake is it?

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Cinelli style?