In the spirit of winnowing the stable, I have begun listing which bikes or projects I can't part with (and which to keep a constant eye out for!).

With some of my bikes, I'm realizing that it's the components that I can't let go of more than the frame. And specifically, the cranksets.

So today I tried to list out some of my top rated cranksets and which components and frames I would pair with them. It was surprisingly helpful, and I now feel like I can ride myself of some frames, hubs, derailleurs, etc that I don't have a good match for.

Is this a backwards way to build bikes? In the past, I've always let the frame tell me how to build it. Anyone ever built a whole bike around a crankset, or some other component?