By:Stickel

I have been incredibly impressed by Steve Stickel's work.  I went back and forth and found that there was really not a production frame in existence that did what I wanted it to do.  I swallowed hard and sent a deposit.


I originally wanted Hammerschmidt capability and or bolt on front derailleur, 150 rear, room for fat (snow type) tires, the ability to run rigid or suspension forks.  Basically I wanted the bike to do everything.

As we went back and forth in the design process, I streamlined my thought process.  The reason I wanted all of the above is because it is a costly custom build, I just wanted to add everything in the kitchen sink because it was custom. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should, however. As I looked at my priorities I decided I wanted this bike to have a laser focus.

Single Speed only. Rigid only.

I pushed Steve for non-corrected geometry and we went back and forth on it. Pros, cons, fork availability, etc. In the end he decided aesthetically that corrected geometry would look better at my bar height (uncorrected looks great on short guys BTW). If we had gone non-corrected, he would have used a 1 1/8th HT

At the same time I was looking at custom forks and while I wanted to go that way, I came to the conclusion I felt more comfortable using a production fork. Fork availability with correct offset is a lot better in the 465-475mm range. The particular fork for this build is an On-One Superlight Carbon.

As a bonus, I now have the flexibility to run a suspension fork in the future. I can do it without messing up the geometry much (if at all). We went with the 44 HT so I have the option of using a tapered fork should it come to that.

Then came the waiting and the riding.  Lots of riding.  Lots of fully rigid very technical riding, learning my likes and dislikes and what I would do different from my current rides.

Here is the proposal I gave to Steve:

Purpose:

Awesome all mountain all terrain technical rigid 29" single speed.

Needs to handle lots of steep rock rollers to near flat terrain. Lots of bending/stretching on this frame and head tube.

Must maneuver well at low-med speeds in tight terrain.

Here is what we ended up with geometry wise based on a 470X47mm fork:

Chainstay: 16.3+ with big clearance
Front Center: 25.75"
BB drop: 70mm figure 11.8" or so.
HTA: 71 degrees
ESTA: 73.5 degrees
Reach: 16.75"
Wheelbase: ?? short
ST: 17.75"
ETT: 23.6"

And here is the build process of the unfinished frame:



















































And that is how a By:Stickel comes to life. Off to PC this week, and hopefully in my hands in two weeks.