Quote Originally Posted by jclay View Post
How do other countries do it?

I don't know about others but if I wanted to learn how to build bicycle frames I'd find out how successful framebuilders do it and then do what they do. Oh, shit, that's what I did...except for a couple of early crap frames where I didn't listen and follow. Hmmm. Is there a correlation?? I wonder.
The front end of my CX bike feels like it wants to wash out in the turns, and in other situations it feels too sensitive to steering inputs. Geometric trail is 52mm. How do I resolve this? Hmmmm.

I could argue that the frame is too stiff (yet compliant, of course), or the brakes, or the saddle, or it needs to be lighter or whatever. Maybe it's the lack of thru axle drops or cantis. But this just occurred to me! Lotsa folks make CX bikes and it's easy to find the dims of many successful builders! Gee, I wonder what that might reveal?

So, I took a look. The dims of my frame are in the range of a half dozen successful CX bikes that I just looked at....but the geometric trail of the fork is 10 to 15 mm less than rigs from established and successful builders (link here: https://www.velocipedesalon.com/foru...tml#post969706 ).

Rather than argue that what I did or what I thought was better than what others are doing, I'm gonna build a replacement fork to provide, pending discussion with others, 62ish mm geometric trail!

I'll bet you that the bike works better than it does with the current fork.

See, I didn't have to go and make all the mistakes myself. Besides, as my papa san was fond of saying "Learn from others. You won't have time to make all the mistakes yourself". That goes for our country, too. All we have to do is 1) look at the existing answer sheet and, 2) start changing the cultural/legal conversation to generate the necessary support, just as the NRA has been doing since the '70s, and we're on our way. It will take a while, of course.

Simple, if not easy. Or we can keep doing what we're doing.