<Clark Kent - they were great bikes. Best TI welds I've ever seen. Poor guy was taken down in a heap of molten titanium by :emond BIkes when they suddenly pulled out of their business deal and went with Trek and those robot built 853 frames.>
Not completely accurate. Pat Clark sort of disappeared from the scene a few years ago leaving everyone wondering what had happened. What had happened was he got himself in deep financial doo-doo that he couldn't climb out of, and rather than doing the usual bankruptcy routine, he just took all his remaining marbles and split for parts unknown, leaving his partners and the banks to sort out the mess, and leaving a few suppliers and customers in the lurch. The Lemond deal was only one of the skaters on the already thin ice. A sad tale, and a lesson for all businessmen with great ideas. By the way, the guy who did those fabulous welds for Clark/Kent and also some for Moots, Ted Leal, now welds all our Davidson Titanium bikes, and we are glad to have him here.
In our experience learning about the finish on titanium, we haven't encountered any differences in color from the various suppliers of tubing (Haynes, Ancotech, Titanium Sports/Sandvik). We do get tubing in different states that needs to be treated differently, though. Some comes through very shiny, which makes the Scotchbrite finish a breeze. Some is very dull and take a couple more steps to get the brightness that we like. We send some frames out to a chrome plating shop to get machine buffed, and that produces the finest finish. Looks like slightly yellowy chrome.
Regards,
Bob Freeman