Originally Posted by
spokesniffer
Well, Mark just stopped by on his way back from the airport and it will take him another 3+ hours to drive home, so I wouldn't expect comments till tomorrow...he has been at BAMF...BUT..please don't confuse Mark with Specialized. Specialized gave Mark the opportunity to look at one set of lugs and tubes as an integrated system and design exactly what he would want for his own bikes...we are just 'borrowing' them for 74 bikes and then Mark will continue on using these for his own bikes. So Mark is speaking for Mark, not the big scary place. And if you knew Mark he is a pretty self effacing guy and wouldn't purposely insult another builder (unless of course Bruce Gordon started it first!). Sometimes the chosen words don't always reflect the intent of the writer as I am sure all of us have experienced in email from time to time.
I think the simple intent of the piece you quoted was to say that few have the resources or interest in looking at this problem in steel given the current domination of carbon in the market. Further, with the aid of CAD he has been able to look at tube/lug transitions and interfaces and really refine how they behave in a way that can't be done when lugs are designed at one point and tubes at a later point. In this case the behavior of one influenced the design of the other. It was a feedback loop that evolved both tube shapes and castings iteratively. A feedback loop for the obsessive to be sure, but this was the design path. And to speak to the development of the tubes and lugs, which is what I did...it was a bitch. March harder than when we did this back in the 80's and for the simple reason that most of those shops are now closed and the guys that were damn good at this have found other things to do. Once upon a time you could go to Microfusione or Takahashi and their natural output was a beautiful product with fine grain structure, a beautiful radius where you wanted it and thin walls. All of that seems like a fight now and, speaking only for myself, the current generation of casting houses is just not in the same league. Whatever you thought about Tange, those tubes were damn consistent...another element that is not quite what it once was.
If you are truly interested then I would simply ask Mark to lay it out straight. The guy can design, engineer & build and he has a lot of experience seeing how things fail in a commercial setting. He also has a sense of humor so I wouldn't worry too much about poking him, but if you are going to call him out on the numbers be prepared to hold up your end of the argument.
-Bryant Bainbridge
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