While Grant is not a builder, he is, in a real sense, a bike designer, and I think his ideas are important, though I disagree with some of them. I think you'll find extended headtubes on a number of classic English bikes, and certainly Mercian and others in UK will still do this on request.
Regards,
Jerry Moos
Brandon Ives wrote:
> I'm with Brian 100% here. I think extended headtubes are freakin
> stupid. I hate to burst people's bubbles but Grant is a marketing person
> NOT a framebuilder. Don't get me wrong I've met Grant twice, back in the
> mid-90's, and like the man, but too many people take his words as
> gospel. He say's he's designing in a classic style, but I've never seen
> any "classic" bikes with extended headtubes. So by definition
> "classic" stems should work just fine on bikes that are tall enough. I
> think the problem is he's designing for riding in the drops and as bars
> have gotten deeper the stem has to rise. All my bars are level with the
> seat or an inch above and I don't seem to need an extended headtube, I
> also don't use deep bars. The answer is to raise the toptube and unless
> you have a really high BB it shouldn't matter. Please let's not start a
> whole Grant thread since it's one of the main reasons I left iBOB after 4
> years. We can discuss the bikes and the "real" builders, but until Grant
> picks up a file and torch let's just leave him out.
> enjoy,
> Brandon"monkeyman"Ives
>
> "Nobody can do everything, but if everybody did something everything would
> get done." Gil Scott-Heron
>
> On Wed, 23 May 2001, Moos, Jerry wrote:
>
> > Brian, what is your objection to extended headtubes? Obviously you disagree
> > with Grant Petersen on that subject. I think you made a comment at Cirque
> > that "there are better ways to achieve the objective", but I'm curious what
> > those ways are. One can obviously use a stem with a very long quill, but
> > that rules out a lot of classic stems, or one can slope the top tube upward
> > from seatube to headtube much more sharply than Rivendell does, but at some
> > point this causes the frame to look strange, like the team issue Giants.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Jerry Moos
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Brian Baylis [mailto:rocklube@adnc.com]
> > Sent: Wednesday, May 23, 2001 2:55 PM
> > To: Philcycles@aol.com
> > Cc: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
> > Subject: Re: Fight pickin' ... Re: [CR]Quiet again
> >
> >
> > Phil,
> >
> > To a degree I find this true for myself as well, although my customer
> > bas has become only those that want what I specialize in. I never build
> > anything I don't want to build, like extended head tubes (have turned
> > dwon lots of those requests) and so on. Good example of a frame not
> > likely to be ordered is the frame in progress shown at the Cirque, much
> > of the details of which weren't shown in the photo on Dales' site. By
> > the same token, I've built some rather elaborate frames for paying
> > customers since the Wizard days.
> >
> > Brian Baylis
> > La Mesa, CA
> >
> > P.S. Got Bruce looking into a Flying Scot for me. Not really sure what
> > they are, but whatever it is, I'll take one.
> > >
> > > In a message dated 5/23/01 8:10:01 AM, CYCLESTORE@aol.com writes:
> > >
> > > << The best work from custom work shops is commissioned by the buyer, not
> > the
> > > builder. I would guess David Bohm and Richard Sachs best work came from
> > their
> > > best customer (if you can define that) that was willing and able to pay
> > for
> > > it. >>
> > >
> > > Oh, boy! I get to start one!
> > > My best work-not highest quality but most elaborate and thought out-is for
> > > myself. My customers (with one exception) are not normally willing to
> > spend
> > > the time and/or money for this sort of stuff. And I don't mean just work
> > time
> > > but time spent defining just what you want. I've made nice bikes for
> > > customers but not as nice as my own because I really know just what I
> > want.
> > > And it's very hard to draw that sort of thing out of a person because they
> > > may not know the range of choices available to him and the education
> > process
> > > takes as long as building the bike. I like to do it but it's tough to get
> > a
> > > customer to go along.
> > > Phil Brown