13 Apr 2007

I must confess, at the begining of this year I thought this year was going to be pretty crazy exciting, but I didn’t know if was going to be THIS exciting.

The first lot of Ethers are about to be finished, and Erin will finally be getting onboard his, which will a) Shut his whinging up, and b) stop the peanut gallery from flinging shells at him. The finish has turned out bloody excellent and everything we expected. Tough as hell, thin as hell, light as hell. The only downside to it, is that aside from being a pain in the arse to apply, the light colours do show through the brass that’s been used to apply any braze ons. We tried to minimise this by welding almost everything on, but you just can’t do that with things like bidon star reinforcements and head tube reinforcing rings.

Small price to pay for a killer finish that adds only 30g or so to the finished product? We think so.

Basically how the colours work out is like this. The more ‘metallic’ the name, the more like anodising it looks. The colours that are more military have a very low gloss level (about 15% typically) and look, well, more military. The Ethers are all hand sanded, degreased and bead blasted, so they’re going to look fairly flat compared to paint regardless. It’s all part of the ‘look’. Here’s some of the alternate colours available-

Here’s some pix of a couple of the frames, fresh from the refinishers. The colours on these are ‘Silver’ and ‘Antique Bronze’.

And the really cool part? Without the 20g headbadge and the decals, they weigh…….1560g.

Okay punk, so what else is new?

Well, yesterday we had our most massive sales day to date, with orders for three Titanium frames on the same day. As if this wasn’t exciting enough, after six months of twoing-and- fro’ing, we are FINALLY going to launch into the Tephra CTi!

What the heck is that? That is this -

Similar but not at all like the old Lemond ’spine design’ (aka what happens when a Litespeed humps a Trek. Think ‘Aliens 3′ ), the Tephra CTi is 3-2.5 Titanium on the bottom for that snappy zoomy feel we all know and love, with Carbon Fiber in the places where vibration would typically be transmitted unceremonously to your arse - the seatstays, seat tube and top tube. So what you’re possibly looking at here is the best of both worlds, a road bike that’s snappy, smooth, sexy - and more importantly, completely custom.

If this year is ‘Year of the Steel’, it’s only just barely trumped the ‘Year of Carbon’, because the advances and options in carbon these days have never been better, despite Boeing, Airbus and the ‘War on Whateva’ hoovering most of it up.

Even though it’s early days, I want to extend a personal thank you to Pete who has jumped in with both feet and said ‘Let’s make this bad boy’. Without his faith and a lot of sweat and tears, the Tephra CTi would probably have been relegated to the ‘Maybe after Junior arrives’ backburner.

Now? It’s becoming a reality.

That is so cool and so exciting, I’m nervous like a kid on prom night. I’ll keep you posted.

Posted by warwick @ 6:11 am

3 Responses to “It’s a mad mad mad mad World”

1. Grover Says:
   April 28th, 2007 at 4:35 am

   Awesome, just sold a Lemond Spine Design, it was so comfy but couldn’t get over the fact it was a Trek. Now I know what my next roadie will be. Got any ballpark weight figures - 56cm virtual tt?

2. thylacine Says:
   April 28th, 2007 at 8:21 am

   Not 100% sure to be honest. I guess it’s a matter of what weight the carbon saves over a full Tephra Ti. Full Ti would be 1350g at a guess, and the carbon is 150g lighter for the stays plus 2 tubes, so yeah, something around 1200g would be my guess. With butted Ti and higher modulus carbon you could nudge a kilo easy, but then price-wise you’d be well into the diminishing returns part of the bell curve.

   Well, that’s assuming that you aren’t already!

3. Grover Says:
   April 29th, 2007 at 9:55 am

   light enough for me - it’s on the list! when i feel like being poor again i’ll be in touch.

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