I’ve been talking about getting this bike built for ages, and after much hard work it’s finally done! I’ve actually had it for a few weeks but I was waiting for the media guy at work to finish cropping some photos he took, and i didn’t want to post up crappy phone camera photos, but steve did a nice arty shot for me so here it is:
It grew out of a talk in the hallway at work with a workmate, and he said that he was interested in getting into framebuilding, and wanted to make a frame for someone, so I said that I could do with a new bike.
We set about designing it by having a look at my current fixie (apollo salt), and a track frame, and then tweaking the geometry so I would end up with something a bit more nimble, yet not a full track bike which would be a pain to ride on the roads, as I would be doing some long distance road riding with it rather than the track (although i think it might end up on the track anyway).
The frame was built by lachlan flint, and is branded ‘flint’, and is his first road bike. He put a lot of effort and resources into this, and the result is an immaculate custom made frame that is solid, yet not heavy, and looks damn sexy.
He’s looking to build some other frames as well, so if you want an actual custom bike, then I can put you in touch with him (although I’d limit it to adelaide people at the moment).
but enough of that, here are the specs:
frame: dedacciai tubing, lugged construction, gunmetal grey with silver flake, white with pinstriping sections with ‘flint’ decals.
geometry: 56cm frame, 73 degree head angle, 55mm BB drop (i think), 403mm chainstays, 40mm rake forks
wheels: dura-ace hubs/mavic open pros (from velomine) with continental gp4000s tyres
gears: sugino RD-2 with surly 46T chainring and surly 18T/eighth inch 17T sprocket, miche pista track chain
pedals: shimano m540 SPDs
seat: selle italia flight max gel, ritchey pro carbon seat post
bars: nitto noodle bars, cinelli bar tape, bianchi pista stem
brake: surly urban cross lever with shimano ultegra caliper
forks: trek bontrager carbon/aluminium forks, stripped back and clear coated, cane creek s6 headset
With a custom bike like that, your media guy should have also followed Prolly’s rules:
-Include one drive-side shot: Get down level with your bike and try to capture it all in photograph from the drive-side.
-Include one detail shot: [we] want to see what makes this bike stand out from the rest! A nice lug shot or maybe a detail component shot would be ideal.
Looking forward to seeing both these photos and more from this builder, it’s lovely from what I can see.
Can’t wait for some more pics, forks are looking nice-did he make those as well? doesn’t look like you have a biddon cage mounts though, bummer if you’ll be doing osme km’s on it.
I know that you have just joined and are excited, but here is a tip to a successful forum existence: FFS calm down and don’t post every little thought that pops into your head.
i need a new stem anyway as the current one flexes too much. anyone know where i can get a decent one that doesn’t have any crazy markings?
the current one is a 6 degree rise, could go for 0 degree, but i really don’t like going down any more than that or i can’t use the drops.
I have a VO one. VeloORANGE It’s light and was pretty cheap. It may have a bit of flex, I don’t notice it cause my bars have some flex anyway. Its pretty clean. if you need a stiff stem why not a Thomson?
that looks pretty good.
i want a plain silver one just for aesthetics, and a thomson one would look a bit funny. it doesn’t need to be ultra rigid, but the current one flexes quite noticably when out of the saddle
I’m pretty happy with mine. A friend has one too with no complaints. Its about the most plain, half-decent stem I could find - other than basic kalloy ones.
You could see about finding a Thomson 26.0 Road Elite in silver, they don’t make them any more, so would have to be 2nd hand or NOS (pricey). If you have oversize bars there are Deda stems also.
About how much did it cost you all up? I realise that’s a rude question — so if you don’t want to answer it, then that’s okay with me. I’m just curious about how much it would cost me to get a true custom frame made up and kitted out with good quality components. Of course, if your frame builder friend only charged you ‘mates rates’, then I guess my question is kind of irrelevant.
I like the name (‘Flint’), the decals and the colour scheme. Very classy. I can’t quite see what’s behind the letter ‘F’ on the headtube decal. What is it? How does it relate to ‘Flint’?
BTW - some of that VeloOrange gear is very nice. The good $AUD:$USD echange rate also makes it much more affordable. I don’t want to threadjack - but I’d like to know:
(a) whether anyone on this forum has ordered stuff from VeloOrange; and
(b) if so, then how did that go?
(i.e. how did you pay, were there any difficulties, did it take long to get to you, was it what you ordered, was it well packaged/undamaged, etc)?
I’m not really sure about the F decal on the headtube, I think it was just a style thing.
I’m not sure of the exact total cost, but it was somewhere between $1500 and $1800 for the complete bike. I was charged just for the parts (tubeset, lugs, dropouts, paint, etc), so it came out to a lot less than you would normally pay. He’d probably be willing to do one for not much more than cost at this stage, but it will take a while, and he hasn’t found anyone in aus that can do fancy paint jobs. I can put you in contact with him if you want. costs will vary a lot depending on what tubeset, lugs, and dropouts you want, but you can do whatever you want with the design
