tarwheel 

I posted some photos of my new Bob Jackson touring frame on the commuting and touring forums, but I'm adding one here for the folks who don't frequent those other forums. My bike is definitely old school with bar-end shifters, threaded stem and lugged steel frame. I'm using it for commuting and light touring. My inspiration was some of the old Miyata touring frames as well as the Romulus and Rambouillet that Rivendell foolishly decided to mothball. The amazing thing is I was able to build the entire bike for less money than it would have cost to buy a Rivendell frame. The new BJ frame only cost about $600, available in just about any color/decal combination. More photos at my Flickr page.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/33353398@N05/

X-LinkedRider

I like the ride, I have a schwinn Le Tour in same color. What kind of seat pack is that? Looks like it swivels with the bike?

tarwheel 

It's a Carradice Barley seatbag with a Carradice Bagman rack that attaches to the saddle rails. The rack supports the bag and keeps it from swaying.

raverson

Gorgeous looking bike and I love the color.

Curious why you went with a modern bar vs. something with a more classical shape.

tarwheel 

I had the Ritchey bars and already blew my budget buying other components. Besides, I like the Ritchey bars, but I might try some Nitto Noodles after a while.

nlerner

Very nice! I've been oggling the classic lugged framesets that Bob Jackson and Mercian sell. One question: A particular reason why you went with that size? You have lots of seatpost showing and use a headtube extender. Why not go with a 59 cm frame or would that have been too long a top tube?

Neal

tarwheel 

Two reasons on the size. First, Bob Jackson gave me the wrong specs on the frame and told me the headtube would be about 1.5 cm longer than it turned out to be. They don't put the geometries on their web site, and I thought all the specs were worked out ahead of time through numerous emails. Second, the next larger size had a top tube that would have been too long for me.

Ironically, I was trying to choose between two models, the World Tour and Audax, and chose the touring model because it supposedly had a longer head tube. It ended up shorter than what they told me the Audax would be, which is the frame I probably would have ordered otherwise.

I'm not too upset about it because the frame was such a bargain, and I had the headtube extender on hand, but it was annoying. If it had been a custom frame, I would have been livid.

Mike Mills

The real question is, does it fit? It is not a bargain if it doesn't fit.

I was thinking the you had realtively long legs and a relatively short torso. I was rationalizing that you wanted the smaller frame size because it had a better-fitting (shorter) top tube. I guess I was wrong.

It's not a bargain if it wasn't what you want/need.

tarwheel 

The bike fits me perfect, if you use top tube at the most important criteria (which I do). The only issue was the head tube length, and I have that issue with nearly every frame because I need to run my handlebars even with the saddle height. If the head tube was the length they told me it would be, I could have built it up with no extender or even spacers. I could have used 2 cm of spacers rather than the extender but decided to use the extender since I had it.

My other bikes are nearly the same geometry as the BJ. I have two Eddy Merckx frames that are 57 x 57 (center-center), and so is the Jackson. The Merckx have 72.5 seat tube angles, and the BJ is 72. You can't get much closer than that.

If I were to order a custom frame, the only thing I would change is the head tube length. But it's not worth paying $1,000 extra to me to gain 2 cm of head tube length.

Mike Mills

kk, sounds like you're happy.