Terry is a co-owner of Seattle’s Cascade Bicycle Studio. This is Terry’s new Resolute SLX. The custom paint scheme is designed by a good friend of the shop’s, Derek Blagg.

Terry says:

I wanted to keep a steel bike in my quiver as I really like the feel of a steel bike. The bike was designed to be road bike ready for fenders. As the project and the paint evolved I realized that steel bikes are really where my passion for bikes is. I truly believe a steel bike can ride beyond the expectations of any material. Now the bike is MY ROAD BIKE and might see fenders for a few months a year while my Mudhoney SL is devoted to cross season.

Can you please let everyone involved with my new bike it is the most wonderful bike I have ever owned. There is no reason in the world not to ride a Seven. You get just what you want. The welds and paint are so perfect. Thank you.

We wrote about steel the other day, and how the accepted wisdom regarding steel tube sets simply doesn’t match the reality. Today, we want to address titanium. Interestingly, while riders have believed for years that the type of steel a frame is made from is supremely important (we agree), they have simultaneously assumed that titanium is just titanium, that it’s all the same.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Seven uses mainly US-milled, Cold Worked – Stress Relieved (CWSR) titanium in our custom frames. We do that because no other titanium available today has a longer fatigue life or higher tensile strength. We know that’s true because we have a fatigue tester here in our shop and regularly submit tubes to rigorous testing. Pushing materials to their breaking point is a great way of finding out how good they are, and our research indicates that the titanium we source is the strongest available and maintains that strength over significantly longer periods than the titanium available from mills in Asia.

We always want to use the best materials, because we want to build the best bikes, but we also have a commitment to lifetime warranties that prevents us from cutting corners with lower quality products. When  you buy a custom Seven, you put your faith in us to produce a bike that will fit like a glove, corner on rails and last forever. American CWSR titanium allows us to repay your faith with a frame of uncompromising quality.

New Seven partner shop, Belgianwerkx in Mequon, WI (just north of Milwaukee), wanted to do something special for their first floor demo bike. We think they succeeded. A steel Mudhoney, painted in their colors with Belgian flag accents, new HED Belgium rims, Cannondale crank, ENVE cockpit, the works. Nick Moroder, shop manager, said, “The handling is spot-on. SO responsive. And it’s unbelievably stiff for any bike, let alone just steel.”

Check out the Belgianwerkx site for more pictures.

For decades the conventional wisdom has held that certain steel tube sets, whether Reynolds or Columbus or True Temper, held magical, mystical properties that gave riders the exact ride feel and performance they were looking for. And while that may be true for some very specific riders, each of the legendary steel tube sets, whether Reynolds 853 or Columbus SL, is exactly that, just one tube set with a very specific diameter and wall thickness. Sometimes there is a choice of a second down tube, but that is the extent of the customizability of the tube choice. If you happened to be the perfect size match for the tube set, you were in luck, but if you were smaller, the frame you received might be far too stiff, or if you were larger, far too compliant.

At Seven, we have always built our frames from tubing specific to each rider. We take into account rider size, riding style, preferred road feel and general riding conditions. We may select a top tube or seat tube from one of the big steel tube set makers if it’s appropriate, or we may take raw steel tubing and butt it by hand, here in our factory, to craft the exact ride a customer is looking for. We butt and bend all our steel chain and seat stays in house. When the bike is custom, one size never fits all, and one tube set is never appropriate to every design.

This is the reality of building in steel, if you want a custom bike, one tuned for both performance and comfort. There is nothing wrong with the tube sets of legend, but it is true that each set is only a limited solution for a small subset of riders. When you get into custom bike building, we feel it is important to think more deeply about your materials, to see how they can best be applied in any design and to push back against convention, whenever necessary.

More about the Limited Edition Giro bike we created with our friends at Cascade Bicycle Studio here.

Jordan, putting the finishing touches, on a steel Resolute SLX 007 tandem.

One of our new stock colors, graphite, on a Resolute SLX headed to the shipping dock. Check out all our new paint colors here.