RobbieTunes

I ride an Ironman, a Douglas Ti, and a Kestrel CF. (Call me poor.) What you said in your last 3 sentences sums my exact experience up in a clear, concise, and succint manner. And I'm not even sure what succint means.

As far as Richard Schwinn's comments.... Wouldn't it be great to have him as a neighbor?

thank you for the post. if nothing else, i learned tange is pronounced "tahn-gay". Shoot. I thought it was like the orange juice.

tcs

Since this post is on Classic & Vintage, I'll point out that Richard is the grandson of Frank W. (who I've never heard refered to as "THAT" before) and the greatgrandson of company founder Ignaz.

Best,
tcs

PS - RobbieTunes: Tom Sawyer, not his friend Huck, was the protagonist in the famous fence painting.

StanSeven

I heard him speak once in front of a large group. They handed up a microphone, he smiled, and starting singing "Louie, louie." He said he always wanted to do that and cracked up the audience.

mustang1

I guess I must be a less sophisticated rider. Actually, I really am. To me, the lighter the bike, the faster it'll go at any given instant. If the bike is heavier, it's possibly gonna be more comfortable, in which case that might have a higher *average* top speed over a longer distance.

In the showroom, I'm always more impressed by a lighter bike (I especially love those bikes that weight the same as a pack of corn flakes). On the road, I dunno, I'm too unsophisticated.

cs1

Did you listen to the podcast? If you did you would remember about the Cornell study Schwinn initiated. Basically Cornell said you'd have to have a bike weigh 12lbs more before you noticed. That's a lot of weight IMO. Guys are spending thousands on grams. Makes you wonder just how good the marketing guys are.

Staggerwing

Weight is but one variable, among many, affecting performance, and to become overly fixated is akin to missing forest the forest for the trees.

What about basic geometry, head angle, BB drop, wheelbase, and front center. From an engineering perspective, for a given material, basic frame stiffness is going to have a stronger correlation with tubing diameter than frame weight. Look at the progression, over the last 30+ years to larger diameter, thinner walled tubing, in all materials: steel, aluminum, titanium and carbon. Paramount was one of the early players in this movement, on the steel front. Look also at some the uber stiff, beer can, aluminum racing bikes, pioneered by Canondale.

There are also manufacturing reasons for picking specific materials. Steel, especially the lower alloys can easily be joined by brazing, either with lugs or fillet brazing, both accomplished with a oxy/acetylene torch setup. Simple bends, of constant diameter, or mildly tapered tubing, can be performed with fairly simple jigs and tooling. Aluminum can be joined with TIG welding; commonplace now, but not 30 years ago. TIG has also become a standard for joining steel, as well as titanium. However, the shielding and welding technique for titanium is an order of magnitude more difficult. Improper technique will generate a brittle joint, which will fail at some point down the road, although at time of production, there is no way of telling. If you are good enough to weld titanium on a regular basis, you likely won't be working on bicycle frames. Carbon is another ball of wax, and not easy to do properly. There is no easy, inexpensive way to test integrity of the layup.

RobbieTunes

I did poorly in school.

Tigerprawn

I don't know the intricacies of weight to speed and I'm not sure I ride/compete hard enough for it to make a difference, but I do like telling the CF folk that my Peugeot is a tad under 20 lbs

unterhausen

I always heard Tange pronounced "tan-gee" with a hard g. But who knows. I thought they went out of business and the remnants of the company now had a much more anglicized name.

mtnbke

The real and simple truth is that it is very cheap to manufacture steel frames.

The skill level required is very low. Brazing lugged steel frames can be done by anyone who cares to learn how. The learning curve is incredibly short. Steel is forgiving, one of its most redeeming characteristics is that it masks flaws in construction and materials.

You can't compare the precision required to mock up and braze steel tubing versus aluminum tubing. Steel frames need to be close. Aluminum frames need to be perfect. Companies like Cannondale and Merlin that made high end aluminum and titanium frames had some of the best welders in the country, with experience measured in decades. Brazing steel isn't even in the same league.

I think Rivendell and Waterford make incredibly beautiful bikes. However, there is reason that small shops always work with steel. They simply can not afford to produce anything else. Its very cheap to make steel bikes, even high end steel bikes. You just can't run a small shop making aluminum bikes. You just flat out couldn't afford afford to keep a skilled TIG welder.

As to an aluminum bike feeling like its going to come apart underneath you. Nonsense. I'm 6'7" and 375 lbs. I own a Cannondale 3.0 road bike, a Cannondale M2000 mountain bike, and a couple of Cannondale tandems. I also have a Giant OCR1 aluminum bike which I don't really like and will be selling soon. These bikes are all rock solid. I don't know what you weigh, but its probably a hundred and nothing or two hundred and nothing. Even when I was a competitive athlete I felt like a steel frame was just spaghetti.

Anyone who can put out high wattage won't be a big fan of steel frames. Bottom bracket deflection is so considerable that its an outright distraction. I'm not talking about spinning up your Power Meter for your an intense five minute effort to produce a peak graph, I'm talking about being a powerful rider who puts out consistent high wattage without having to ride an overly high cadence to do so.

The simple fact is that Richard Schwinn makes steel bikes because shops like Waterford and Rivendell don't really have a choice. They simply can't afford an experienced TIG welder. Such skilled labor probably bills out at a higher wage than Schwinn or Peterson themself draw.

I'd love a Rivendell, don't get me wrong. I think they are beatiful bikes. However don't kid yourself that steel is better than modern materials. Titanium is everything that steel is, and superior in every aspect. Carbon and Aluminum make better, stiffer, more comfortable and faster bikes with less compromises.

Steel is heavy even the oversized steel frames churned out by the Italians in the last years of focusing on steel, however steel is cheap, and working with steel is cheap, and is the only material of choice, as a result, for small shops with limited means.

mtnbke

The real and simple truth is that it is very cheap to manufacture steel frames.

The skill level required is very low. Brazing lugged steel frames can be done by anyone who cares to learn how. The learning curve is incredibly short. Steel is forgiving, one of its most redeeming characteristics is that it masks flaws in construction and materials.

You can't compare the precision required to mock up and braze steel tubing versus aluminum tubing. Steel frames need to be close. Aluminum frames need to be perfect. Companies like Cannondale that made high end aluminum frames had some of the best welders in the country. With experience measured in decades.

I think Rivendell and Waterford make incredibly beautiful bikes. However, there is reason that small shops always work with steel. They simply can not afford to produce with anything else. Its very cheap to make steel bikes, even high end steel bikes. You just can't run a small shop making aluminum bikes. You just flat out couldn't afford afford to keep a skilled TIG welder.

Kommisar89

Sorry but I don't know that I would agree with some of your statements. There is a well respected frame builder right here in town that will build you a frame out of any material you want, aluminum, Ti, steel, whatever, and he ain't getting rich. His day job is as the frame builder for DaVinci Tandems.

Scooper

Waterford's 33-series model line-up and entry level Gunnar line are both TIG'd steel. Waterford has had TIG welding expertise since the mid-nineties, and has built several TIG'd Ti frames for customers since 1996. Waterford's Ti TIG welds are free of contaminants (no tungsten contact and use of positve pressure argon) and the dimes are as nice as anybody's.

Lizzy

Fascinating podcast by Richard Schwinn. He knows a lot about materials. I listened to the whole thing and made notes. Yes, I do wax my steel bikes. I prefer steel. It's reliable, strong and produces a great ride. I'm not a racer so those things matter more to me. I've bought 4 old lightweight bikes - Schwinns and a Raleigh.

A while back I read No Hands: The Rise and Fall of the Schwinn Bicycle Company, an American Institution by Judith Crown and Glenn Coleman. I highly recommend the book for anyone interested in that era of bicycle making. It's fun and informative. Well written. Not very complimentary to Ed Schwinn, who's now selling cheese, but a good read. So much of what happens in the bicycle industry is geared toward economics. It makes me appreciate companies who are still making steel bikes. Steel bicycles are more elegant than fatter aluminum bikes. I've tried aluminum and went back to steel.

texraid

I listened to it and to add to your comment, he said a 1 pound savings in weight, according to the study would gain you 1/12 MPH.

unterhausen

I'm afraid your whole post is full of misinformation. There are plenty of small builders out there making Ti, Tig'd steel, Aluminum, and even carbon frames. It's very cheap to make an aluminum bike, otherwise the low end wouldn't be full of them. And Cannondale doesn't think they are going to have any problem replacing their welders when they move production to China. I'm pretty sure there isn't a large pool of highly skilled welders waiting for jobs in China, they are going to train people. Somebody like Waterford selling frames for most of $2k can afford a very experienced Tig welder.

cs1

Which is part of the whole Cornell study. 12 lbs makes a 1 mph difference. Lets face it, that makes a difference in a race. But for 95% of the riders out there it just doesn't make a difference. I'll go out on a limb and say that nobody on this forum is going to enter the tour this year. Is a sub 15lb bike going to make a difference in our lives? I think not.

cs1

I couldn't agree with anything more.

Trakhak

Post no. 60 by mtnbike has been criticized for underestimating the number of highly experienced TIG welders available in the U.S. Fair enough. But his main points (that it's easier to set up a shop as an inexperienced builder and start banging out steel frames than it would be to build with aluminum, that big and strong riders are often better off on aluminum, etc.) are correct. The first year Cannondale was making their aluminum bikes, I sold one to a 350-pound wrestler who had complained about the flexibility of his steel bikes. He came in a month later and said, "You get any other big guys in here looking for bikes, you can send them to me. I'll tell them to get a Cannondale."

By the way, I've noticed that the people who post in the Track and Clydes/Athenas subforums seem to take a common-sense approach to the subject of frame material. No problem with aluminum for those people. Make of that what you will.

Longfemur

My guess is that most people here who are negative on steel frames simply have NOT ridden a high-quality steel frame. Frankly, I don't think we should be judging frames by how they work for people who weigh 200-300 lbs. There are ugly, dead frames for them out there, plenty of them, and I find it a shame that those who don't weigh that much are forced to suffer on those kinds of rock hard frames. Your comments have zero value unless you have ridden a fine steel frame that employs modern alloys and methods for stiffening where it's needed (such as in the bottom bracket). Don't judge by comparing to your old 1970 10-speed pipe steel bike or the mass-produced entry-level steel bike you used to have, for Pete's sake, and certainly not by that cheap hybrid or mountain bike you rode before misleading commercials during Tour de France coverage enticed you into getting a road bike. Those of us who have experienced this are preaching to a choir who can't hear us, because I don't think most people would even recognize fine riding qualities if they bit them in the ass.

mtnbke

I'm not a fan of Santana tandems by any means, but they do know their marketing. They get one thing right, that a good tandem is never made by a boutique trendy frame-builder.

The reality is that for the bikes we are talking about, there is no 'comparison' shop. On tandems, or custom steel bikes, the cyclist never has anything else to compare to. Of course they like their custom Waterford, or their custom Atlantis, or their custom tandem. There isn't another bike to ride to see if they like 'that' one better. Its a self serving self fulfilling prophecy.

The reality is that there are only a handful of tandem shops in the country equipped to allow test rides of different bikes in a given frame size. The truth is that most people who ride get serious about tandeming after their first don't go back to the Santana's or the DaVincis. They go with a production Cannondale, Co-Motion, or a Calfee. They want something stiff, something that flat out performs. These are the people that have taken that test ride on the 'other' bike.

Howver, the Waterford and Atlantis crowd aren't really looking for the ultimate bike. They are buying into the ethos of the company, and the marketing/story that the company tells, in fact its more about that than the bike. Heck if they wanted the 'best' bike they'd go get almost the exact same thing in Titanium from Merlin. Lugs and all...

Faster
Stiffer
Lighter

Steel is real, real cheap to work with.

mtnbke

Columbus SL flexy
Reynolds 531 flexy
Dedacciai flexy

They've got nothin' on my 3.0 'dale.

'fine riding qualities' translates into, self fulfilling things I need to believe about myself as a cyclist, validated by my exquisite taste in a common flexy, inefficient frame.

A steel frame is the emperor's clothes.

mtnbke

I should have been more clear in my posts. Waterford makes TIG welded steel frames, heck every Gunnar made is TIG welded as far as I know, however, TIG welding with steel can not be compared to TIG welding with aluminum, or having experience welding titanium.

Schwinn, Mongoose, and GT are not the same companies they used to be. Cannondale will go the way of GT (more so than Mongoose and Schwinn) now that it drank the kool-aid, no doubt.

However, the reality is clear. You want larger thinner tubes on a bike to increase stiffness while simultaneously decreasing weight. Only you can't do that with steel. It gets TOO stiff, and is still TOO heavy.

Any fool can make steel bikes, put out marketing spin trying to create community around the ethos of the brand, but at the end of the day is it a better bike than is available elsewhere and with different materials? Is the craftsmanship really superior?

Heck if you've got to buy a steel bike, at least buy a decent Italian one. However, there is a reason that the Italians who all made steel bikes for the better part of a century are all focusing on more exotic materials.

It has to do with making stronger, lighter, and faster bikes than is possible with steel.

Vintage lightweights are nice. However, there isn't a single appication (road bike, touring bike, bike path bike, tandem, mountain bike) where I'd want a steel frame.

Whatever steel can do titanium can do better.

The simple truth is that people aren't attracted to a Waterford or an Atlantis because of the bikes...they don't merit that much consideration, and most certainly are not the best steel bikes going, let alone bikes going.

Buying a Waterford or an Atlantis is like buying an Alfa Romeo, what you're really buying isn't a bike or a car, but a validation of the things you want/need to believe about yourself.

There are better bikes/cars.

Lizzy

Richard Schwinn knows a lot about materials and I think they make excellent bicycles with .4mm steel. The thing is, there is always something someone considers a better bike. I like the way steel frame bicycles ride. I'm not into racing or a lot of speed. As it takes noxious chemicals to make titanium bicycles, that's something else to consider. Our environment has drastically changed for the worse. That is affecting when and where we ride, or even if we can ride.

embankmentlb

I had a 3.o c'dale gifted to me. Hands down the worst bike i have ever owned. I remember when C'dale & Crest partnered for a team. I thought the oral health connection was appropriate because those frames would knock the fillings from your teeth. mtnbke DDS at your service?