Is this bicycle over the top?

[yarg]

Some time ago, maybe a year, I asked if any bicycles were constructed of stainless steel. I had searched the net but found nothing, but wanted to ask anyway in case I missed something. All that responded said no because satinless steel had significant loss of strength due to welding. Well while tooling around I found out Bohemian (bohemianbicycles.com) has built at least one lugged stainless steel bicycle.

My question is if you have seen it, what was is your impression? Is it just to much a work of art, over the top? Would you paint the tubes and just leave the stainless lugs? Wouldn't this be the ideal for all who think steel is the best for ride but love titaniums care free maintenance?

IMHO (took me over a year to figure that abbreviation out) this bike is the rolls royce of bicycles.

[jerk]

columbus used to make a stainless steel tubeset called metax. not many builders ever used it....that's all the jerk knows.

[dbrk]

When Columbus introduced its stainless steel tubeset many of us thought we had found the Grail. Alas, it is not to be. Not only is the material difficult to work with---so difficult that most builders found it quite unsatisfactory---the ride proved to be less than ideal, often too whippy (that's the old word for not stiff enough and not vertically compliant), and unfortunately heavy. Now I'm not concerned particularly about weight and don't often complain about bikes being not stiff enough, but the reason we find so few of these lovely bikes is that the ride was not All That. Rhygin was the foremost proponent but they couldn't sell this or survive (they seem to have bet the ranch on it), so what we see are a few examples from very talented boutique builders. In addition to David Bohm's gifted work there is a nice example from Troy Courtney. Look here at cccycles.com, that's Courtney Custom Cycles. Troy no longer builds, he's onto other things, but he made a full stainless bike once, very over the top.

There are bits of tubesets left and I hear tell that Sacha White uses some here and there on Vanillas, but in my every inquiry with great builders, I have been dissuaded for all the reasons already stated. Perhaps someday stainless will be revisited but metallurgy looks like it has gone other ways. Methinks this is an old idea that will not see reclamation for many years to come.

dbrk

[gaxi]

I know some German framebuilders who still use stainless steel as their regular tubing material. Have a look at http://www.marschall-framework.de

[Bruce K]

Don't forget the old Rhygen (sp?) frames.