OP, hope you can stand the wait. First they were expected to arrive late Jan/early Feb, then late Feb/early March, and now May which by the Italian calendar must mean Christmastime.

how often on ebay? not seeing any.

Not super frequently, just keep your eyes peeled. I got mine used from a forum member, thats another place to look. Just out of curiostity, what drew you to the bare knuckle, it seems like you have little prior experience with fixed gear/track bikes (I hope you arent offended, and correct me if I'm wrong)

I have a Bareknuckle as well. I like it a lot, rides nice, it's pretty stiff and responsive. The paint is a shame though, it chips so easily. http://velospace.org/files/DSC_2949.JPG

If i had a dollar for everytime someone typed this...

he forgot to mention vertical compliance

new rule: if you don't weigh +200lbs or hold 30mph for at least a quarter of a minute, the phrase "stiff and responsive" cannot be typed.

Hold 30 for 15 seconds? What gear ratio are we talking here?

My math is rusty... you're talking about 15 seconds right?

Thanks for the license, but I think I would use whatever terms I wanted to even if I didn't weigh 200+, or could hold 30 for less time than it takes me to button my fly after I take a piss.

Many of us in this forum could meet at least one of your rather arbitrary criteria. Who made you the language sheriff of the internet anyway?

Well he didn't specify, so I s'pose it can be in whatever gear you like. Freewheeling I can get er up to 48 for a couple of minutes downhill. Even if we assume he's talking fixed in a normal street gear though, I fail to see what the ability to spin fast has to do with having the ability to gauge frame stiffness. I'm more likely to notice flex mashing up a hill at 6mph than I am spinning downhill or on a flat, and if you can't spin smoothly, you can't hold top speed, so not only is it an ariitrary measure, it's the basss ackward one.

ha, i doubt anyone will notice a lack stiffness holding any kinda of speed for 15seconds unless they are spinning at some crazy cadence and pedal square...

you wanna talk about stiff then talk about some kind of standing start...

Try spinning 130rpm sometime on a fixed gear with a square stroke and let me know how that works out. ;)

i know how it would work out. on a frame that isn't really stiff they gonna bounce all over the place and probably get scared and slow down at about 130rpm.
one of my bikes has a pretty soft fork and unless i spin perfectly smooth when the cadence gets high the bike starts wanting to bounce. so i gotta crouch down, be real light on my hands and really concentrate on spinning a circle...or shift gears...ha...that happens quite a bit faster than 130rpm though.

blah blah blah pompous dickholery blah blah blah.

If i had a dollar for every time someone was being an dick on this forum...

Wait a sec. I forgot to mention it's vertical compliance. blah.

Guys, I think we are all missing the issue here. Someone with the user name jessicat88 is posting.

so, she's probably a sexy 19 or 20 year old babe.

not mine...but I wish it was
http://velospace.org/files/bike1copy.jpg

that green bk is awesome.

i love mine, it spent more than i should have, but it was worth it.

how many track bikes (track specific, not the relaxed geos, although they may well be pretty stiff as well) aren't stiff and responsive?

sadly I do weigh about 210 these days...

I had an old Bridgestone keirin bike that was mushy as pudding. The geometry was plenty "responsive,", but I'd never ridden a bike that was so unstiff. It was just worn out.

I am highly considering buying a BK. Everyone who has one should post up.

get one

i just got my bareknuckle last week, and i couldn't be happier! feels good, looks good, etc. i love it.

i know it's been talked about in all the threads about these bikes, but its important to mention the sizing. the geometry makes them very tall bikes. i usually ride a 56/57 and i can JUST stand over the 54 bareknuckle.

Thats because sizing a bike by its seat tube or standover is meaningless. How many times does this need to be stated?
People often report that the bareknuckles run large. They do not. A cm is a cm and my bareknuckle is exactly the claimed size for all the tube dimensions. It doesn't have an unusually high standover. My bareknuckle fits the same as all my other bikes, BECAUSE I BOUGHT THE CORRECT SIZE, IRRESPECTIVE OF HOW THE SEAT TUBE WAS MEASURED. The bareknuckle is sized c-c and it has a horizontal top tube. A 54 frame measured c-c is basically the same as a 56-60 measured c-t, depending on how high the seat tube extends from the frame. The 56/57s you have ridden were probably measured c-t and/or were some sort of compact geo virtual seat tube length. There's more to frame size than one number..you have to look at all the tube lengths, understand how they were measured, and the effects that the angles will have on size.

be nice :)

everyone spouts how stand over height does not matter but that's only true if you can still stand over it. no one wants to ride a bike that they can't even straddle

I nominate mihlbach for dutret's stunt-double. I mean that as a compliment BTW.

If you have a properly fitting bike, you should be able to stand over it, even if it is a conventional horizontal top tube frame made by Rivendell. In that respect, standover is a non-issue. However, if you can't stand over your bike comfortably, its probably either too large for you, or you are an unusually proportioned human and probably need a custom frame.

agreed, and this is exactly the argument i was just going to start with mihlback.

I would have preferred the top-tube length of the 56 bareknuckle, but i couldn't stand over it. Should I have bought a bike i couldn't stand over just because it might fit better while riding? I don't think so.

Like you said, you do need to take more into account. If you look at two bikes with the same length seattubes C-C and horizontal top tubes, but one has a higher BB and a steeper ST angle, does one bike have a higher standover? Yes. And the bareknuckle has a higher standover than most people might expect it to, for a given size.