But since the vast majority of road forks are made of carbon fiber now, and a carbon fiber fork blade just comes out of a mold, it doesn't much matter where, how, or if it's curved, right? There, I had to jump in.

Now get me outta here before this thing takes another digression.

Thank you for this excellent post, John. When sloping top tubes first came out they were definitely to the benefit of making fewer size frames. Giant did that.

I'm interested in the term "raking" and "rake". Clearly, the term comes from the yard implement, so one might surmise that the origin of the term in bicycles was the act of curving the fork blades in a way that is similar to the curved tines on a garden rake. Which means that the act of curving the blades, "raking", preceded the observation of the amount of offset created via the bending that we now call "rake" as a measure of that offset. In other words, "rake" and "raking" is the measure of the curve that creates offset.

Which is funny, since it means that straight blade forks have offset, but accurately no rake at all.

Mine is fine other than embedded grime. Tried using Windex and paper towel, with little to no effect:


May try using something stronger to clean it, but otherwise does the job intended.

Plastic spoke protectors are surprising expensive. Also, there are several different designs and you need the correct one.

My local bike shop kind of laughed when I actually asked for one. They didn't even have one lying around because they throw them all away.