Originally Posted by
Miele Man
... I had a professional frame builder add cantilever brake studs, cantilever brake stop bridge, rear rack seatstay bosses ans an under the downtube pair of water bottle mounts for less than $70.00 including the partss. When the guy found out that I was a fair distance from me he offered to do the job right then if I could wait an hour. Could that have been done with aluminium or carbon fibre?
It actually could be done with CF, it's just not usually worth the trouble. There's a guy in my home town who makes carbon fiber canoes and he's offered to retrofit one of my older CF bikes with S&S couplers since he's already done the same with one of his own bikes apparently.
In any case, I doubt that steel frames will go away for touring applications. The material is more than good enough, and it's plenty cheap to get a custom frame when compared to pretty much everything else. Most people stick with a budget, and what they'd spend on a bike with marginal improvements would be spent on touring longer and more comfortably otherwise. Same deal with bike packing vs regular rack and panniers. Even with the younger crowd there's still plenty of people who aren't into racing and want to carry more than what a frame pack and saddle bag would carry.