Scott’s frame is built using one of my favorite tubesets. It’s the Columbus Spirit. It’s light, offers good stiffness and it looks really cool. The downtube is a bi-oval that has what I guess could be described as facets. The toptube is oval and has facets too. I like to sub in an externally butted seattube and the chainstays are round/square/round with a taper. The seatstays are round at the top and morph into and Aero shape mid way down and then back to round with a taper. All in all the tubeset is very extreme and a great example of how technically advanced steel tubes really are.
Carl,
Are those chainstays Spirit also because I have never seen that shape in Spirit ? Do you happen to know the tubing thickness on the chainstays ?
Thanks for your time.
Yes, and as far as I know they are the only Spirit chainstay Columbus offers. The wall is 0.7mm at the big end and 0.5mm and the little end. You can see the spec sheet for the whole tubeset here: http://www.strongframes.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/Spirit.pdf
Hey Carl! What kind of a ride will this achieve as compared to say your Custom Blend? Just curious.
Hi Beej, just a little stiffer without a weight penalty. They go down on wall thickness and up on diameter which stiffens the frame. So it’s not really any lighter than a light Custom Blend they just stiffen it for the same weight. I always worry that Extralite implies the Custom Blend isn’t light but the lightest steel frames I make are actually Custom Blends.
As proven by my 17.0 lb vunderbike! Thanks for the explanation.