EP 04: An Engineer's Take on Why Steel is Real

[MUSIC] Welcome to episode four of The Radivist Podcast. At The Radivist, we combine a radical approach to storytelling with a deep love for bicycles. We want to hear about the places bikes take us and the people they make us. I'm Hayley Moore, a cyclist and contributing editor at The Radivist. In each episode, I interview someone with a unique story to share. Bikes are just the starting point. Daniel Yang will be the first to admit that steel is not the best material for making bikes. But as a bike designer and engineer at Newhouse Metalworks, and the founder of his own steel frame building label Artifact, he's devoted most of his professional life to working with the material. In this episode, Daniel and I talk about the liberties and limitations of steel as a frame building medium, the creative opportunities of 3D printing, why Newhouse decided to move its production to Taiwan, and the challenges of scaling independent frame building in the US. Plus, be sure to stay tuned until the very end, where Daniel gives a teaser about an alternative wheel size that he and Nick and Newhouse are really excited about, though it's probably not the one you think. Daniel Yang, thanks so much for coming on The Radivist Podcast. Good to be here. I feel like we should have brought snacks for this conversation with the amount of ground that we're here to cover about steel bikes. You know, we want to talk about steel as a frame building material, your work as an engineer and designing bikes with Newhouse and archetype, and then of course, all the different trends around steel bikes that are shaking up the industry right now, specifically wheel size. So, you know, how do you describe yourself to people who don't know you? How do you describe what you do in the bike industry? Yeah, that's always a funny question. When you go to those dinner parties and you know, people ask you what you do. I usually say I'm an artist, but technically I'm a bike designer and mechanical engineer, and I also play a character on YouTube now. I am a YouTuber. But you're playing yourself on YouTube, more or less. Yeah, I play a politically correct version of myself on YouTube. The real me is a little bit more raw. I feel like most people go the opposite direction with their YouTube personas. Yeah, I mean, it's funny when YouTube, I realize, you know, after you film yourself doing something and then you have to spend hours editing yourself and criticizing yourself, I realize that being normal on camera is something called acting. And there's actually actors who do this thing and get paid a lot of money. So, not quite there yet, but yeah, I have to, you know, you have to play a character a little bit on YouTube. Yeah, well, I have to say I have been really enjoying the channel so far. I feel like you do such a good job of like breaking down like really complex, like technical information into like super digestible way. Well, then also like bringing a lot of different people from the industry who might not necessarily have their stories told as much into the into the spotlight. Yeah, thanks. I mean, prior to doing bike stuff full time, I, well, prior prior to that, I wanted to be a professor. So in a way, YouTube is teaching for me. And then in a lot of ways, also, you realize that academia is just a complete positive game anyway. And I feel like I reach more people and educate more people on YouTube. Like that's one of my driving missions, I think, is obviously make cool, fancy bike stuff, but most people can't afford that. Or most people don't need a new bike. Everyone already has a pretty cool bike. And so how I give back is just showing people through YouTube, the thought and design and different manufacturing, different ways of looking at cycling, which we can get to the whole media conspiracy. But first, we got to talk about steel. Yeah, media conspiracy later. But yeah, we're here to talk about steel bikes. I'm curious to know what was your first steel bike. Those are like a long, long time ago, I had a J-Mis steel bike. Oh, no, no, actually, my very first road bike was a steel beonky with like Shimano Sora components and like a goofy quill stem that was pointing up at the face plate, not the cool sexy ones. I remember it had a triple, but the prior owner had removed the granny gear. And I was just like, why? Because it's just a massive gear at that point. I mean, triples aren't cool in real cycling. So at least I was cool. When did you start getting into designing and making bikes? All throughout grad school has always been a curiosity of making bikes. I think as an engineer, you go into it wanting to build things, or you go into school and going to becoming an engineer wanting to build things. And then you realize your life is just meetings and Excel sheets and emails. So you don't get to build things. But in grad school, you know, I wanted to build bike and didn't get quite far, you know, like I obviously researched and learned, but there's a lot of skills and pieces that in order to build a bike that you don't necessarily know and you only can find out they're doing fast forward, maybe six or seven years ago by chance I met Nick Newhouse of Newhouse Matterworks. And at the start, I actually commissioned a custom frame from him. And after I rode the bike, I was like, oh, it was a steel, heart-tail, 130-mm travel. That geometry ended up being our latest product, the Newhouse Solstice, which is a production bike. But it's almost like seven years now we have that bike. But anyway, rode that bike. And immediately after the first ride, I was like, whoa, steel is real, you know. You know, as an engineer, like I'm always skeptical of everything, but there was definitely some, aside from like being able to get the geometry and fit that you want, there are some performance benefits of steel and that is more compliant. And honestly, I think the weight helps a little bit in the performance of the bike too. But anyway, after that, we started working together. Both Nick and I, I bring in more of a 3D printing mechanical engineering background. Nick is a really good fabricator. He's been in like motor sports and mountain biking and he's a pretty good rider too. Newhouse was already a thing, but we started working together, building bikes, and then now steel built bikes not as much, but then we have a full line of production bikes that is making most of the money for us. So before we kind of jump down further into what Newhouse is up to, Nick was obviously doing Newhouse before you came on. Was he a one-man operation at that point? Yeah, Newhouse was like fully insured. It had the business credentials and everything, but it was kind of still an experiment at that point. It's hard to be a frame-builder by yourself. And the fact that we can split the tasks really helps us grow the brand and develop the product and make better bikes. I think that's an interesting point that you make about how it's hard to be a frame-builder by yourself. At the same time, we see so many small builders start with steel. What do you think it is about the material that lends itself or working with the material that lends itself to that? That's a great question. Why do builders start off with steel? There's two reasons, I think. There's a technical reason in that steel is a really accessible material to work with. It's cheap. It's easy to form, meaning you can manipulate it, you can bend it, you could dimple it, and most importantly of all the materials, well, let's set titanium aside, but comparing to aluminum, steel does not require heat treatment after it's been welded. And so with an aluminum frame, you need a giant oven to heat treat the frame and then you need to realign it. So it's a much more industrial process. I know there's different alloys of aluminum that don't need the heat treatment process and some builders use that, but that leads to my second point of why most builders start off with steel is that there's a culture behind the steel community. And so we have the tooling, we had the technology, we talked to each other, we were inspired by each other, and that's just not the case with aluminum. There's a lot less institutional knowledge among frame builders on how to do aluminum. This is the caveat to the entire discussion. I have no idea what's going on in Europe. So like, you know, Europeans who are listening to this, talk about it. I'm not trying to speak for you. I'm speaking for American frame building and American businesses because we got a lot going on right now. So anyway, sorry, to step back, when you are building a steel frame, you are using the knowledge and techniques that have been passed down for 40 years of American frame building. From I like to think the origin point of the creative frame building was the mountain bikers in the NorCal mountain biking scene, the inventors of mountain biking, Joe Breeze, Tom Ritchie, Bruce Gordon, that scene, a lot of the techniques and ideas we have are kind of passed down from that. So it's in the culture, I think. Sure, but it's crazy, you know, in preparation for this podcast, I was reading that, you know, Reynolds came up with a tube button, like way back in the late 1800s. So some of the like the technology that we still use in terms of like how we form the tubes has gone like way, way back to like, you know, some of the earliest days of cycling. In the era that you're talking about, let's just say the 1900s, early 1900s, steel bikes were made with lugged construction. And so what that means is that you cast a lug, basically a pipe fitting, and then you slide the tubes in and then use a silver or brass to glue the tubes to the lug. And that was the methodology of assembling frames up until like probably the '80s. The main method of manufacturing frames and frame building. And the thing about lugs is that you are constrained by the geometry, right? Whoever makes a lug dictates the head to angle, dictates the C2 angle, dictates the fit of the bike, because a lug fixes the angles of your bike. And also it fixes the tube diameters of your bike. So meaning if you want a bigger tube, you can't just insert a tube in. So it really limits the creativity. And so there's an additional way of assembling bike. The next step up that, which is Philip Brazing. And so Philip Brazing is different from welding in that you're using either silver or brass to glue two steel tubes together. So you're not actually melting the steel tubes. You're using brass as glue to glue the two steel tubes together. So yeah, for anybody who's seen Shalmone's bikes, like that's the method that he uses. Yeah, and when you do it that way, that gives you the freedom of building any bike you want. You could change the geometry. You could use different tubes. Like, yes, Reynolds made butted tubes for hundreds of years, but they were also making butted tubes for lugged frames. So then the question becomes, what if we use bigger two diameters and make it stiffer? What if we want to change the angles? What if welding or brazing is much hotter than brazing a lug? And so you need thicker tubes to withstand the heat. So there's like slow evolution. And of course, there's tick welding too, which is when you actually weld steel to steel. And that's the modern production method of steel and titanium and aluminum bikes. But to go back to this history, all these steps along the way developing the steel bike, it has a hundred years of history. And then more recently from the mountain bike era on, there's this spirit and history of innovation. And it's kind of funny. A lot of innovation revolves around putting bigger tires and wheels in your bike. And then we could talk about 29, 32, 27, have all that kind of stuff later. But because steel is so skinny, and you can just crush it to make more tire clearance and drive-train clearance, it really helps you innovate. You can build a bike in your garage and test something in a day. I'm wondering if you could speak to that a little bit in terms of how steel lends itself to being kind of this experimental material when trying out different things in design. Essentially, I think you could build a pretty safe steel bike. Because the material is so tough and it bends instead of cracks and the fatigue life, it's not everyone likes to say the fatigue life of steel is infinite. It's not like ultimately a bike will crack if you keep pushing it. But the fact that the material is so durable, and also because you have the experience of, let's say, a thousand different frame builders, over 40 years who've been goofing around with the material, who have an idea, like an institutional knowledge of like, that will break. I need something this thick, or oops, that one cracked. I need to increase the wall thickness and then someone else develops a thicker tubing. There's a natural progression within the community. With aluminum and carbon fiber, if you have the engineering resources, you could develop a really nice bike too. You need the engineering resource and it's not like there's just not a community around it. Carbon fiber is a better material than steel to make bikes. But if you were to produce a bike, it would cost a lot of money. If you were to make a product, you're investing at least a hundred thousand dollars into molds, even before you begin building a company. If you invest a hundred thousand dollars in the molds, you have to do a mainstream product to make sure that it sells to people. Whereas, like, "Haley, I'm sure you've written some pretty weird steel bikes." Yes. I went to pause there because I think some people will listen to me. Their ears will definitely have perked up when you said that carbon fiber is a better material for making bikes. How would you define better in that context? And maybe why are you not designing carbon bikes then? Well, if someone wants to invest in me, give me a million dollars. For sure, I'll start a carbon fiber. In fact, I am starting small. I am developing a carbon fiber fork for my road bike, the Eterna. In fact, I have it somewhere. Obviously, to the podcast, there's not going to help. But yeah, it's a beautifully styled carbon fiber fork for a steel road bike. But anyway, why is carbon fiber a better material? You just have infinite control of it. It's stronger. It's lighter than steel. In a lot of ways, it's cheaper to produce. It's cheaper to mass produce than a steel bike. A steel bike requires a lot of skilled labor and steps along the way to process it, whereas carbon fiber, you basically, and this is really cool because I just visited China to see it happen, is you basically are just like taking, I'm not trying to downplay it, but you take stickers of carbon fiber. You stick them onto a bike-shaped thing and you inflate in a bladder and then you pull out and you have a finished bike. Obviously, it's a little bit harder than that. But yeah, it's a better material for bikes is just if you're playing that game, you need to spend a lot more money in tooling and engineering resource and then you have to charge a higher product, price, and then you're just playing the mainstream game. If I brought out a new carbon fiber bike, no one would care. Or maybe they would. It'll take a couple of years to build up that story. So the strengths then of carbon are of course, it is a stronger material and it's stronger in multiple directions or it's more manipulable in different directions. And then you feel like the possibilities of shapes that you can create with carbon are just more infinite because you're putting the material in the mold itself. So this word I struggle to say, isentropic. Yeah, isentropic. Steel is isentropic, meaning that it's uniform mechanical properties throughout. Whether it's like, if you pull it in one direction, it's the same strength and stiffness as you pull it into another. Carbon fiber when laid up as a composite is an isentropic, I think that's how you say it, what it means is that the mechanical properties are different for the different directions of the material. Like for example, in the direction of the fibers, carbon fiber is really stiff and then in not the direction of the fibers, it's really flexy. And so because of that, you can fine tune the mechanical properties of carbon fiber infinitely. Do you have infinite resources to fine tune it? No, but you could do it. And of course, also with steel, you're limited to certain shapes. Basically just round shapes or you could form it to a little bit. Same with aluminum, you can hydroform it a little bit more. But with carbon fiber, you have infinite control of the shape. And when you design anything, the shape or the geometry of the object matters more than the mechanical properties. The mechanical properties are just like a little scalar, a little multiplier at the end of your design that says, if I made this in steel, it's this stiff, but if I made it in titanium, it's a little bit stiffer. Hold on. Batteries have nothing run out. It's crazy. You can say. Yeah, so we had a minor cat related interruption here. Yeah, I would say my cats do probably $30 of cable damage every year. Month. And so I think they chewed through one of my power cables. So I'm totally a cat person, so I would probably just let it slide. Yeah, I mean, I slide, let it slide. That's the problem. Okay, but we were in the middle of talking about the benefits of carbon as a frame building material. However, obviously you are, you're in the steel space. And so I'd love to hear you talk about, even though you know from an engineering perspective, why carbon is a superior material for bikes, what keeps you excited about working with steel? Yeah, and I would even say I think aluminum is actually a superior material to make bikes than steel, but it, and again, it comes all the way back down to, it's really the culture and the history of steel that you're buying into, I should say, not buying into, but when you ride a steel bike, you have a hundred years of grassroots development, creatives, frame builders, and factories trying to perfect this really old technology. Whereas with aluminum or carbon fiber, you have to spend a lot more money up front on tooling. And so it means, you know, you can't play around with the material. You have to come in with investment. And when you come in with investment, you have to make money. And so you have to do more, you have to make money immediately. And so you have to do much more mainstream products to give a tangible number. If you were to start a a carbon fiber project, it would probably cost $200,000 to get frames, just frames, and probably take like six months. But if you want to start a steel production project, if you want to just build steel bikes, you could just do that in your garage, although it does cost, you could go to a school, like a frame building school. But if you wanted to actually start a production product, it probably cost you $50,000 total to start one. So, you know, like, still a lot of money, and obviously you have to know what you're doing. But a fraction of the cost of the upfront cost of working with carbon. Exactly. In carbon, you're spending probably $100,000 or more on tooling, plus design cost, plus everything. Whereas with steel, you're probably spending maybe like two or three thousand on tooling, maybe more, maybe depends on, like some people make catalog steel bikes, they get the dropouts, they get an existing chainstay, they give the factory a geometry. Those are definitely a little easier to do. But then like for us, we cast the yolks, we do our own dropouts, we cast our own bottle bracket, and then we spend a lot of time in the design. So it costs a little bit more, but not even close to a carbon fiber project. I feel like one thing that's related to the startup costs of working with carbon are often the order minimums that you have to put into, like once you have the mold made. And so, you know, you've already kind of committed to a certain number of those frames. And so I do feel like one of the benefits of working with steel is just that it's so much easier to prototype and iterate and make changes between individual bikes, rather than being like, well, we'll fix these changes in the next run of this carbon frame in two years' time. Yeah, I mean, you hit the nail on the head there. Like, not only are you committing to an initial quantity, but if I spend $100,000 on molds, I'm marketing that bike for the next five years. You know? That's the greatest bike for the next five years, for sure. But steel, like, you know, we can do a 32-inch production bike in a couple months, right? We can goof around, like both, we can goof around in our shop, and we can make a cool bike that, like, you know, I thought about starting a brand of just tall and small, like, bikes for if you're six, four and above and five, four and below. And that's something you could do with steel and titanium. You can't do it with a carbon fiber. You just can't commit to that risk. Like, people bounce back and forth about, like, what's the best material? It all comes down to design. And like, a design of a steel bike, it's influenced by the culture of a lot of grassroots cycling, a lot of creative people, a lot of legends who started mountain biking or developed the first gravel tire or developed this first 29-inch tire. They're all related to frame building. So one of the things about steel that I think we're seeing is obviously through, I would say, the entire 20th century, well, maybe up until, like, the 90s. Steel was generally on an upward trajectory. You know, the techniques were being refined, the types of bikes being made were being expanded. And then, you know, in the 90s, we start to see the introduction of aluminum and carbon. I mean, I think even in the late 80s, the first Tour de France winner on a carbon bike, I think that was in 1986. Greg Le Monde was on like a hand-built carbon-tubed bike with aluminum lugs. So obviously, the dynamic between materials was starting to shift, yes. But I do feel like ever since, you know, call it the early 2000s, carbon has certainly surpassed steel in the number of frames being made in that material. But would you say that 3D printed technology is, you know, bringing steel kind of like back more into the mainstream consciousness? Do you feel like we're having like a resurgence of metal bikes, whether that's like steel titanium or aluminum? Or do you feel like, you know, that balance is never really going to be altered? I would say the ship has sailed on materials. And I think we can get to the discussion because this is actually what I've learned through my travels through Asia, is that there is a really rich history not only in frame building in the United States and Europe, but also in, you know, we call it manufacturing, but it's also frame building in Asia too, specifically steel. But let me touch on the 3D printing question. I think it has totally revitalized frame building and not just steel frame building. Like, honestly, I think the future of frame building is actually aluminum printed lugs bonded to carbon fiber tubes. Because welding is actually, welding is actually very difficult to do. It, like, it requires a lot of money and tooling because you have to hold the tubes in place when you weld. And when you weld, you generate a lot of heat, which expands and contracts, so your frame can work. And it's a very difficult skill to learn. In fact, I suck at welding. Nick handles all the welding. Right. So I only cosplay as a frame builder occasionally, you know. But in 3D printing, I think there was an innovation in that lower cost 3D printing became accessible through Chinese companies. Like, they developed their own printing technology printers and they're willing to deal with goofballs like us who want to make some random bike thing. Right. But yeah, it gives you infinite creativity. And like, there's actually interesting shift in that before bikes were designed for metal bikes. Like, quick release bikes were designed for metal bikes, rim brakes were designed for metal. It was like kind of a form and function kind of thing. Like the Q factor on a road crank just happens to fit a chainstay, a steel chainstay and a 25 millimeter tire. But since carbon fiber became the mainstream option, it's given bike designers a lot more freedom to develop crazy bikes. Right. So full suspension bikes. Like I said, most of cycling innovation is cramming a bigger tire into a bike. And when with carbon fiber, you can shape the tubes in a very specific way to allow for more tire clearance or tri-train clearance. And to the point where those new standards like UDH, as a per example, were developed for carbon fiber bikes, it made it really hard for steel bikes to compete with newer bikes. And then you can feel 3D printing came around because that gave you ultimate flexibility to design whatever you want. And the kind of scale of 3D printing apart matches really well with frame building. Like you could older three or four parts and it doesn't cost you that much money. Whereas like casting, I think, is a superior technology to 3D printed steel. It's just stronger. Way cheaper, but casting requires quantities of like 300 to break even. Whereas like steel printed steel, I can make three things. I think the ultimate benefit of steel is its creativity and 3D printing and also the 3D design, like the 3D modeling that has come along with 3D printing is enabling that creativity. And if you take the element of welding out and you just are bonding carbon tubes to aluminum lugs or titanium lugs, anyone can build a bike. A high school girl can build a bike. A middle school girl can build a bike. Like it's that excites me a lot. And you saw if you watched the rativist sea otter video, there was the bike builders at Berkeley. That's exactly what they did. So that's what really excites me about 3D printing. And it's like I said, it's never really been about the material. It's been about the culture and the creativity. And you see the next generation just going all out on that, right? Like they can download a software, design a bike, print the lugs, glue it together. Maybe the first one doesn't work. The second one does. It's really cool to see. When did you start getting into 3D printing and when did new house start putting in orders for those parts? I was in grad school around the time of the kind of 20 between 2010, 2020. And that was the maker revolution where open source was like really exciting. There's 3D printing revolution. I remember assembling the first maker bot. It was like a wooden maker bot really crappy 3D printer in our lab. And that I designed robots that like wheeled robots in grad school. And so having 3D printing really just opened up totally different ways of designing stuff. You're not bound by traditional manufacturing techniques of like how do I hold this part while I drill out a hole. You know, I can just, hey, I could design whatever I want. And that kind of freedom trains you to think a different way. And so that's why when I came to building bikes, I thought, hey, there's like an opportunity here to just be able to streamline the production, create better designs, and also offer some unique aesthetic. And so yeah, that's when we brought it to new house. That was maybe like five years ago. But again, like I say, obviously it's a cool look and you can do some crazy stuff with it. But for the mass audience, a casted piece is better because it's like one tenth the price of a 3D printed piece. Could you use your UDH designed dropouts as kind of like a case study example of how something like UDH was designed for carbon bikes and then your custom design of the UDH dropouts that you use on new house bikes, how that is more like purpose built for steel frame. Does that make sense? The example of UDH is simply carbon fiber likes bigger bulkier structures to give higher stiffness to weight ratios. So the UDH hanger is larger than needed for a steel bike. So because of that you end up with a bulkier rear end and yeah obviously you want things cross compatible and now if you want a fancy transmission drive train you have to have UDH so like the ship is sailed on that. But that's just an example of like how now the higher end products are dictating the design. Like UDH is not a universal standard. It is a way to sell tram products as disguises universal standard like the high end tram products. But you know that's just a small conspiracy theory I have. But don't you think that there is a benefit to say like you're you're on a bike tour and you bend your hanger that you could just go into a bike shop and have that replaced versus like having to contact like the frame builder for you know their bespoke hanger. Yeah I mean absolutely that's definitely the what how things should be is just there's very specific design constraints that don't work with well with steel bikes with UDH that are specifically just to start a patent war with Shimano to prevent them from using their standard. So business whatever. Well I think we're jumping towards how the media dictates bike design which is our our conversation for for later on. But I think an interesting part of the 3D printing conversation is the way that it's kind of connecting smaller builders in the US with these companies who do like the bulk of this printing overseas. I is most of this printing happening in Taiwan is it China like can you just speak to like where that infrastructure is strongest. All of it is in China and it it like American manufacturing let's let's table that for later but I'll just say as a teaser for later it's the printing in China is it's cheaper because they developed their own machines to do it with their own workflow and they're willing to manufacture stuff like we reach out to a lot of American manufacturers and it's like they would rather have a government contract doing something for the military because yeah that makes way more money than our stupid bike parts right. So but let's let's finish on the 3D printing. I think really it's it's it's as a production like a production methodology it's not good because the price is really high but for creativity I think it's amazing like I would love to see more of those goofy Berkeley kids building those lugged carbon fiber bikes. In fact you kind of see a shift even in downhill world cup racing people are using carbon fiber bonded to aluminum lugs just to test out prototypes or to push you know push development so those are not printed those are machined because you have a lot more confidence in a machine part versus a 3 printed part and the companies have more resources to machine those lugs but you could easily 3D print those and you'd be cool. Well structurally though why is that the case that you would have more confidence in a machine part. With with a 3 printed part you're printing the part over layers like thousands of layers and so every layer has to be perfect and it's not it's you know there's always a probability that one layer had a defect right or skipped a layer or a support popped off and so your your part kind of distorted again I'm not trying to dissuade anyone I want to see crazy shit like just do whatever you guys want but from a production standpoint like as an engineer you have a lot more scaledy at the worry about and it's not the best tool for that in in bike world. Sure in bike world so would you say then that 3D printing is the appropriate way to start testing different designs but then like once you have your design finalize you should move to casting. If you're a business yes like it's a very you can have a functional prototypes very quickly if you're a frame builder just this 3D print like that's the the material cost is not even close to your actual like it's only a tiny fraction of your overhead so I think if I go back to the conversation of steel and how really it's not the best material to make bikes but it is the creativity that enables you to do that and in my travels in Asia I've come to learn that there's a much bigger connection than we realize between American frame builders and specifically Taiwanese steel manufacturers. I'll give a brief history the earliest bikes as we mentioned earlier were steel and then loved construction was the the norm in the 1900s and it started in Europe we're talking you know like traditional road bikes right in the 1970s that production moved to Japan so that loved construction moved to Japan and then the 80s stuff started happening there was the BMX boom and because of that they wanted to move those cheap kids bikes into cheaper factories and so the Japanese business people started factories in Taiwan to produce these cheaper bikes these cheaper steel bikes and kind of around the same time in the early 80s the repack hippies in Marin were doing all their mountain biking stuff like Joe Breeze built the first mountain bike in the late 70s and then of course Tom Richie started mass producing them himself and then the legend goes specialized Mike seniored copy that design and had a produced in Japan and those early ones were lugged and then soon this new technology called TIG welding started to happen as a mass manufacturer it's just quicker and cleaner and stronger and so that is the 80s early 90s that TIG welding started to become perfected in Taiwan like as a manufacturing technique and there's a lot of back and forth between the the kind of brands and builders to to work with the factories to develop that right like new tubing had to be developed in order to be TIG welded and those tubes were made in Taiwan new castings for new bike designs you know mountain bikes road bikes were starting to be TIG welded like the new tubing to meet mountain bike the demands of mountain biking do they just need to be stronger yeah actually it's good question for example a butted tube is thick on the ends and thin in the middle and there's thick on the ends because frames always break at the joints they very rarely break in the middle but when you're TIG welding it's higher heat and there's not the reinforcement of the lug around it or like a reinforcement of a fillet around it and so you need thicker butts at the ends and just in general as you ride bikes faster you put more forces into them and so you need stiffer and stronger bikes and so the tube diameters were growing and the the so wall thicknesses were growing and that's the evolution of the sport like mountain biking started to get bigger and faster and you're no longer bound to fix geometry with lugs you could do whatever you want and so that kind of spirit and culture was translated from the early mountain bike pioneers early bike brands into these factories and then we go to the 90s aluminum starts taking over right and then the aluminum production I think started in Taiwan but just moved to China like there's the the theme is when you technology valve moves into a cheaper labor market but the boom went to China and then carbon fiber in the early 2000s started to dominate and then that moved from China to Southeast Asia and so really if you think about steel the steel manufacturing the high-end steel manufacturing business of bikes is like in three or four factories in Taiwan or a maxway tajin and it's kind of cool each one is pretty small like maybe 50 less than a hundred employees for sure they all are family owned and they all have a little quirky their own quirky personality or you know like history so it's not like a big like XDS the biggest carbon fiber manufacturer that's trying to take over the bike industry right now with XLab they have like four gigantic factories with like dormitories and like it's crazy and these are just you know small steel factories not I mean not to undermine it or glamorize it right it's like at the end of the day it is manufacturing you are just building bikes but at least you could talk to the owner or you know like they visit us at sea otter you know it's kind of a fun relationship But yeah, that's what I realized in all these travels is like, when you are either frame building, like that's what we had known earlier, or when you're developing these steel products, you're getting the experience and history from all the people like Tom Ritchie, Bruce Gordon, Joe Breeze, and what they had done to develop the manufacturing in Taiwan. And of course, also the Taiwanese factories who've taken that technology and perfected it, or improved it, or tested it, and now they have this institutional knowledge revolving around steel bikes. - I think the misconception around manufacturing bikes in Asia is often in the US that the only reason that it's done is because it's less expensive. And I think that that's certainly part of the equation, but it's also that there's literally decades upon decades of the intellectual, like capital, and the infrastructure existing and the skill set that is required to produce like high-end, whether it's steel, carbon, or aluminum frames. - Exactly. And I'm confident to say that these factories can build a better bike than we can, right? Obviously a custom bike, you can do things differently than a production bike. Production bike, you have to think more mainstream, but from quality to execution to consistency, a factory that's been doing it for 30 years is better than what we can do in like, you know, five, 10 years, or even 20 years by one person. - Several years ago when I reviewed the new house Hummingbird, you all had the model of a huge size run offerings to try to address like the fit issues that riders of different heights often find with the wider steps between bike sizes, but then also incorporating sort of like a more efficient batch built production model like in-house in California. But of course now you have transitioned to partnering with production for factories in Taiwan, I believe, to have new houses bikes made. Can you talk about your and Nick's decision-making process and deciding to do that? I just feel like it's really relevant to this topic. - At the start, and this is my personal belief, Nick agrees to, but I'll just speak, like custom bike has a lot of benefits, but the problem is like you have to make that accessible to the most people, right? Like we spend a lot of time testing and designing bikes and custom depending on how you do it, a lot of people, a lot of custom frame builders are like we'll build whatever you want, or you know, like you tell me the geometry, I'll make it for you and you don't wanna argue with a customer or you don't wanna tell the customer they're wrong, right? But in our case-- - But also you want your name to be on a bike that you think is a good bike in terms of the geometry and all that. - Yeah, so with how knew how started doing more production stuff, it wasn't necessarily to streamline the whole process, it was to get people a better product in the end or a better experience in the end. So like the full spectrum sizing, I think we had 16 different sizes, like really small steps. That's essentially just custom, right? It's just like instead of you having to know exactly what stack and reach you like, we did the research to help you find out what we think is the best and what the geometry of the bike we think is best for that size. And so it's always been kind of a production mindset, you know, it's not custom for the sake of, I mean, and every frame builder is different. We were never really the artistic kind of frame builder. We just want bikes that ride really well and bikes that we wanna ride. And so like to fast forward to production, we're just carrying that methodology over into something that's more accessible to other people. And even though we can't do 16 sizes for the mountain bikes, we do have five. Some people have three sizes, some people even like bigger brands, like Santa Cruz only have four sizes. Adding the fifth size really helps you find to the right size of your bike. A lot of people are stuck between mediums and large as we have a medium large. And because of that, every size benefits, even the small size benefits. So it was a natural transition. We still get to build bikes for customers. And what really excites Nick and I is we get to build bikes to test stuff and try stuff and really having the production stuff enables us to goof around and do fun stuff like that. And like I said, working with these townies, manufacturers like Aura, I've learned how to be a better frame builder from them because they are willing to share some of their process with me. And also the YouTube viewers. And from that, I realized like, oh yeah. There's people who figured this out or maybe some builder along the line who worked with Aura had figured out that like instead of adding a gusset to their down tube that Aura could but an extra thick special butted tube for down tube mountain bikes to make them a lot stronger. So these are the really cool things. And I'm like, wow, whoa. Unlocked a new skill, you know? Yeah, yeah. Well, it's interesting because new house has gone this way with making production bikes in Taiwan. I know that Sklar bikes has done the same thing. But I think it's interesting that so many small builders in the US who used to do custom are going that route. Can you speak to what the factors are that you think are like limiting frame building, either like custom or production here in the US? Yeah, I would say like the game has changed. Bikes are so much better. And take mountain bike geometry as an example. We've pretty much swung the pendulum from like early mountain bikes where it balls from road bikes. And then we went way too extreme in the early 20s. And now we're back at a reasonable geometry for mountain bike. And so the early days of frame building when the customer could just like experiment and figure things out themselves, those days are kind of gone. And we have a very good understanding of how bikes handle, how they fit. And that doesn't really change too much. And so you're getting a better experience-- and this is all my opinion-- you're getting a better experience with a production style custom bike, like a model that someone has tested out, who's vetted, who've multiple people have ridden, and you know it's good. That's the move to more production, right? Why I feel like frame building is very hard to succeed in. And maybe we should call this independent frame building, like maybe one or two people in a shop. Is that once you get on the hamster wheel, you can't get off the hamster wheel. And like you have a waitlist that's probably three to six months in advance, which means that your next six months are locked in. Every single bike that you need to build is locked in. And that's a rolling timeline, meaning that like next month, your waitlist is also out for months. And you're talking to 10 customers at once who are like one updates or interested in the bike. And it's just a very difficult model to scale. And I feel like the lifetime of independent frame builder is probably 10 years or five years. And then you slowly burns you out. And at the end of it, you don't have any capital or anything to sell. I've never met him, but I really look up to Bruce Gordon. He invented the first gravel tire. He was one of the big proponents of 29 inch wheels. And he was a frame builder. And yet, no one really knows about him. And also, it's not like he's rich, you know? Or I wouldn't even-- I don't know. Don't worry. I should say-- Well, I should say-- I should say was. I believe he passed away a few years ago. Yeah. But yeah, but to your point, though, about your future timeline being kind of locked in, and that being constraining, most of the more mass market bikes that we see come out, whatever it is, that Canyon is releasing this spring, or any of the other big brands specialized, et cetera, those bikes are also probably close to two-year-old designs by the time they reach the market. Would you say the difference is just that those bigger brands have an entirely separate R&D and design department to be pushing that met string forward while smaller independent builders. It's just like a one or two-person operation. So those resources are just more limited. Yes, definitely like the R&D or improving your business is part of it. That's why you have multiple roles. Certainly, at a bigger company, you have more resources to do all that. You could compartmentalize the manufacturing to the business, to the branding, to the photography. But as a frame builder, you're stuck on a hamster wheel. You can't develop a new product. Yes, that's one case. Or, but simply, you just can't improve your website, or you can't take time off. Or you can't-- once you stop everything ends, right? That's just the life cycle, I feel, at least from what I've studied. Obviously, there's some really successful frame builders who positioned their craft more like art. And I think that's how it should be viewed. But there's thousands of artists out there trying to make it, and only if you do. Totally. I do feel like, though, that one argument that's often made for the necessity of small independent frame is that the kind of experimentation that they're willing to do the pace at which they can iterate on designs can influence like the larger bike industry, you know, like what you were talking about earlier with like early mountain bike designs and then that being kind of like hijacked by a larger company. But do you think that that is still true? That, you know, if you think about small independent frame builders like the counter culture of the cycling industry, just like we see counter cultures and other arenas kind of influencing the mainstream in fashion and music in the visual arts. Like do you think it's still true to say that these small builders are essential in kind of like showing different ways of of doing things? I would say sadly, I would say no, not anymore. And like, well, maybe I'll give a little optimistic ending to that question. But look at 32s for example, I feel like some frame builders have jumped onto it, right? And it's not just a gimmick. Like if you're a frame builder, you're excited. You want to make the best bikes possible, right? And there's a new technology. You want to try it. You want to experiment and our customers want to try it, you know? But then a lot of frame builders were just, I think they're just so beaten up that they just see it with skepticism or their, you know, and this is all just opinion. But like it's the spirit is part of what makes the frame building great. And yeah, it running the business or doing it for a long time kind of beat you up. And that's kind of sad. And it's the case with the world. The pace of the world is so fast, there's money being thrown around into everything. And like, just so much harder to be competitive, just doing a good honest business, you know? I mean, optimisticly, I think that this is changing, you know, with the 3D printing and with the carbon fiber lugs, I think frame building will transition to carbon fiber aluminum lugs rather than steel. It's more accessible and it'll open it up to a lot more talent and a lot more ideas. So going back to the 3D printed stuff, you know, one mental parallel that I've kind of made is the design side of 3D printing is sort of the contemporary analog to past builders, you know, super intricate like hand built lugs. And I know like 3D printing like obviously extends beyond like how you're joining the bike. But I just think that today it's in 3D printing where designers really have a chance to showcase like their individuality. And so that's kind of like the shift that we're seeing, like not necessarily that, you know, lugged bikes that have like these intricate, you know, like one off details are no longer considered a craft, but just in the current pace of the world. And with like the current demands placed on bikes, it's in the design of these smaller like elements of bikes where folks like yourself have the chance to like showcase their originality and their art. Yeah, you know what, that is that is a great point that I never thought about. I think in the past, the creativity was expressed through craftsmanship and figuring it out in your shop with your hands. And now I think that that creativity is shifting to expressing yourself with design. There's still some amid like Rob English still shocks me what he can do in his garage with no, no like design tools or no Curtis from RetroTech. He does some crazy stuff just by visualizing an eyeballing, right? I mean, that's 20, 30 years experience. But I do think the next generation, the creativity is expressed through designing in 3D world and then 3D printing it, right? And in a lot of ways that keeps up with technology, right? Like I always said, bike standards now are designed carbon fiber first. And then I should also say they're designed e-bike first. And then they trickle down to everybody else, right? And so it makes sense that you need bigger tools and more technology in order to interface with that. But also the traditional steel bike will still continue exist. You know, the fact that people wear blue jeans is not because blue jeans are the most technically advanced lightest, stiffest, high-performance fabric. They just look cool and they have a really long history. And saying with a steel bike, it just has that traditional aesthetic. Yeah, yeah. Well, you just kind of alluded to the way that you think like the current design funnel, if you will, in cycling is working with e-bikes on the top. And then like that, like pushing the design for everything else. You know, something that we had gone back and forth with in our lead up to this conversation was your idea about how the media influences bike design. Can you just elaborate on what you mean by that? Oh, we're getting to the conspiracies, right? This is my favorite part. So we're deep in the podcast. So everyone who's listening is like indoctrinated now. They're ready, you know, this is the secret information. It's so funny because I am, I am a mechanical engineer my entire life. I just think about designs. I just look at designs. But now I spend 90% of my time doing media, creating media. And why is that? Why do you think that is? Is this rhetorical? No, you want to answer this? No, this is for you. Well, why do you think you're a media too? Yeah. Well, okay, so I can just say that from my writer's perspective, I am personally not somebody who wants to be like in front of the camera. You know, part of my hesitation with doing this podcast was that I just wanted my writing to be able to speak for itself. I don't need to be like a public persona. However, I feel like to kind of have any sort of following or authority in the media space these days, the expectation is that you allow your personality to be more present. So I would imagine it might be the same from a design perspective where you want people to kind of trust your opinions, trust your perspective on the cycling industry, and then therefore support the work that you're doing. Exactly. Yeah, because media is really, really powerful. You know, if you have a bad bike design, the solution is just better marketing. You know, like bad product, better marketing fixes it. Good marketing is a good product, right? But, you know, I live in the Bay Area, right? Home to a Facebook Google kind of TikTok, you know, OpenAI, right? These are the biggest companies in the world and they are media companies. And these media companies, their sole purpose is to sell you advertisements or sell your personal data so that other people can sell you advertisements. And there's a reason why like billionaires are trying to buy media companies like billionaires like Elon Musk, bot Twitter is because it's extremely powerful. I like to think we are using it for good. We're like not trying to sell you products, although we do need to sell products to survive. But like my YouTube channel, we show the design of something. We show like how something is made. So maybe you could appreciate it more. Like I never really want people to buy stuff because of my videos. But if we go to cycling specifically, media controls cycling, media controls, cycling design, the culture, what people see, it gates people from joining in on cycling. I think it prevents a lot of people from doing it. And let's let's break down this conspiracy. Okay. I'm ready. Do you ride a road bike? I do ride a road bike. And I will say that even though I know it's like super complicated, super driven by capitalism. I'm a fan of watching professional road racing as well. Yeah, for sure. I love watching road racing, the storyline, the everything. But I mean, I do like to race my bike, not road bike, but I don't fit that mold of a road cyclist. And I've been road cycling for the past 15 years. And I do it for like eight hours a week. But if you think about professional road racing, the sole purpose of professional road racing, obviously there's the athletes aren't inspirational. But it's to sell advertising on TV to Italian dudes in a bar in the middle of the day. Right. And so if you think about road racing, who funds it? Who funds Pogotar? Luxury watch companies. Right. Golf oil countries. Anyoss, one of the biggest teams, oil, billionaire, right. Red Bull, right. An energy drink. So these are the people who control the image of cycling. And is cycling a giant SUV? You know, it's not. Is it a luxury sport? It's not or sorry, road cycling, right. And that's why on Instagram, all you see are models, you know, wearing the nicest kit. Everyone's super skinny. Everyone's super fit. And like it trickles down from the whole purpose of road racing is to sell ads. And these are the people who are funding it. Right. Let's go to mountain biking. Right. Do you consider yourself a hardcore mountain biker? Absolutely not. No. But I would argue you are. You are a mountain biker. And the problem comes down to who is funding the mountain biking media. Right. The biggest event, red bull rampage. People throwing themselves up. that has millions and millions of views, right? Like, and that's not mountain biking. How many times have you talked to a casual cyclist and said, "Hey, you wanna go mountain biking?" And they're like, "Oh, no, it's too dangerous." And it's like, "I'm not throwing myself off cliffs. What do you think I'm doing?" I'm just riding my bike outside. Headline, I looked this up. Monster Energy, named main partner of Woop UCI mountain bike world series. - Oh, God, no. Like the monster energy, like that just says it all. Like that is the energy of mountain biking and the media. - Not even downhill racing, right? That used to be sponsored by Red Bull. And to be clear, Red Bull also sponsors a lot of the athletes. They pay their bills, right? But like, they're sponsored in the cross country series with Monster Energy. It's like, who's drinking Monster Energy, you know? (laughing) And then the other thing I thought was funny was, I didn't even realize whoop is sponsoring the UCI mountain bike. Like, think about how much money they must've given the UCI to be called the Woop UCI mountain bike world series. - Totally, totally. - And Woop is just a subscription that is probably selling your health data back to you. And when it IPOs, it's probably gonna sell your health data to open AI. Like, you know, all these companies are just, they control the media. And that's why mountain biking is so pro. That's why the culture is like what it is. When the reality is like, people just wanna go by their bike outdoors. - But I do, I feel like though the tension is, 'cause I thought about this a lot, because you know, it exists in other sports as well, where you kind of want as a marketing company, or a marketing department, you want the most inspiring and like aspirational version of whatever the activity is, to be the version that you're promoting. Because there is like, you know, I am inspired by how fast like some of these Rolltor riders can ride their bike. I am inspired by that. At the same time though, there's a huge gap between the way that they ride bikes and the way I ride bikes. So, I mean, how do you think from like a marketing standpoint, companies should navigate, you know, this real versus like, pinnacle aspirational version of these activities? - Yeah, I mean, I'm with you. I love watching, road racing. I love watching downhill world cup racing. I love watching XC as entertainment, right? But, you know, entertainment just exists to sell advertising. That's how it funds everything. And because these are the primary forms that cycling is consumed, like most, this is why I think Radavist is so unique in that, they don't cover racing. Like if you cover racing, you could get infinite headlines of what Pogachar did, the poor second place guy, right? You could get infinite headlines of like Rebel rampage. But it's because the racing is at the very top level, all the brands have to support the racing to exist in marketing. And because the brands have to support the racing to exist in marketing, all the products are racie products. And the analogy I use is like, you may watch F1, but you don't drive a F1 car. You don't even drive like a sports car. You probably drive a camera, right? And like the same with bike design is like, in roadside can specifically, it's insane what people are riding or aspire to ride. And you know, it's cool. Like I like it too, but I also feel like, it excludes a lot of people from joining the sport. 'Cause they think it's an elitist sport that is for rich people. And that's why I do media is because I have to try to change that, right? I'm an Asian engineer who's not a professional athlete, at all, I didn't grow up in bike industry at all, right? I just do this because I love bikes, and I love riding my bike. And that's a story that resonates with a lot of people, but doesn't necessarily have the social media power to project that. And so that's why I spend so much effort doing YouTube and sharing the experience is really to try to build a broader base to get more people into cycling. And I think our bikes reflect that. Like our hardtails are not aggressive hardtails, right? Even our newest bike, the Solstice, it's a 130 millimeter travel bike. And we're purposely not marking the bikes, showing people doing crazy stunts or jumping, or visual identity just showing people riding their bikes, like average people, not even models, right? And then same with Artifact, the road bikes, you may love road racing, but you don't necessarily identify as that, there's options for you. And so building that media around it is the really tricky part. It's like, that the way that cycling is represented to the mass public is not how most people actually participate in the sport. And like I said, a lot of it is media, and then it trickles down to the bike designs. It trickles down to how things are marketed. It trickles down to the culture. And that's why when I realize if I want to design bikes, I have to actually market these bikes myself because it just goes against the norms so much, even though I feel like these bikes suit the norm the most. So that's the challenge. It's another engineering challenge, social engineering challenge. All that being said about the media and bike trends, how do you think we've arrived at 32-inch wheels? (laughing) The closer. All right, let's close this off. It's all related. The 32-inch wheels is interesting. Like I said, as a frame builder, I want to try out the best technology possible 'cause I just like going fast, not to race, but the feeling of freedom to travel further, it's a travel faster, feels amazing. And bigger wheels give you that. The funny thing is like, people will nitpick running a 700 by 50 or a 750 by 55, right? Why don't you just skip all that and just go 40 millimeters bigger wheel? But then the problem is if we tie back to media, if products are sold on racing, then it has to have a racing purpose, right? And in this case, 32-inch kind of ties into that. Like the only reason why Maxis created the tire was because the race team, Scott, wanted to try it out. But it's been cool to see how this whole wave of wheel sizes plays out in real time. And like if you study history, frame builders are the ones to bring in a new wheel size. Mountain biking is really just a new wheel size, right? It's like a bigger tire than you need frames to clear that. Gravel biking is really just a new wheel size. And first gravel tire was made by Bruce Gordon, the rock n' road, right? In 1988, I think, like 40 years ahead of its time. And then you go to 29-ish wheels that was pushed by Bruce Gordon and West Williams to frame builders in the Bay Area. And then if you go to 27.5, 650B, that was really pushed by Kirk Pissenti, another frame builder. So you follow the history. Frame builders are the ones to bring in the new standard. And in this case, that's why we feel it's our duty to test it out and try it and it's faster. And for this podcast only, I think it's too big. And that's why we are going to seriously look into 750D, the 30.5 inch size. - Okay. - Yeah. And for all you haters out there saying, like we're trying to sell you new stuff, whatever, you don't buy it. We just want to build cool stuff. Like our customers agree. So, you know, like you could appreciate it from far. - I think maybe to be the devil's advocate, people who make the argument that, oh, you're trying to sell us new stuff. The implication of that is the old stuff that we like is gonna get phased out. - Yeah, but you can still buy a 26 inch tire. In fact, like it's better that now smaller brands, let's say Strisland, right? They source and stock their own 2.6 plus tire, which no one else does anymore, right? But like it just leaves opportunity for smaller brands to take up these wheel sizes, like Ultra Dynamico, perfect example. They still produce 26 inch tires. And those tires are cool and they're good. So, I don't think that ever will go away. And in fact, it just creates more opportunities for cookie brands and cookie people to exist. - But to go back to 32, because I want to pause, where you said that you think it's too big. I know that NewHouse has made at least one, 32 prototype. - We actually have a production line, the Nova. - Okay. - And also we have a semi-production, ready, waiting on Forks, hardtail, the Hommieburg Titanium 32. But we only made those in medium large, large and extra large. So we haven't made it in any smaller size. And that's for a reason, I think it's too big. - What were the challenges though that you guys had to figure out in the actual design? And do you think that there's any actual compromises in the frames themselves that you had to, that you had to submit to accommodate the new wheel size? - I think mountain bike geometry and mountain bike fit and road, yeah, road and gravel fit and geometry is pretty well understood, right? And so you know, like the bounds of what, what the different parameters like chain-stay-length, bottom bracket drop and your fit, specifically your stack height, the height of your handlebars, where that norm falls into. And 32, for people who are shorter than 510, I think a lot of those parameters go outside the norm. Like the chain-stay-length is 445, the stack, the lowest you can get is like, off the top of it, I think it's like 6, 650, I don't know, look that up. And that excludes everyone who's shorter than 510. And of course you can do like the flip stem and the flat bar, but then that's not a good bike because when you crash your bars will spin around and they hit the top two, your standover sucks, you have less room in your front triangle, the bike is really long. Certainly in certain use cases, like I think bike packing, just having a bigger wheel size for all people, like all sizes makes a lot of sense. But do you walk a single bike packing bike for everything? For tall people, it's amazing. I'm six feet tall, I love 32s. And I know the 800 plus saddle height club, like John and Miguel will love 32 inch bikes because it just feels so much more stable and you finally end up having a normal bike. - But do you like it for trail riding or more for gravel and smoother mixed terrain? - I call it, I would say what I'm-- - Real technical mixed terrain. - I'm excited about this standard 'cause I think it really supports, let's just call it the larger off-road wheel size standard. Both for gravel bikes and mountain bikes, it really encourages endurance off-road riding, right? And like with a 32, well, in fact, I think people are testing in downhill racing and it is faster, but that aside, like having the bigger wheel size and encouraging a bike that just kind of chug long is really about endurance riding. It's not about like rocky single track or technical switchbacks and all that kind of stuff. That, there's already millions of bikes that exist for that. But when you jump on a 32, the rolling speed is insane. Like it almost feels like you're cheating. Certain conditions, I'm just like, wow, how is this bike just like rolling over stuff? I mean, Hayley, you've ridden fat bikes and plus bikes, right? Imagine you had that roll over without the bounciness and the kind of like weird rolling resistance handling properties of it. That's a bigger wheel size. Do you feel like though that for me, it just seems like on relatively flat, smooth surfaces, it makes a lot of sense. But it seems like when you factor in any kind of climbing on the bike, even if it's just like on a fire road, that becomes a lot of mass to start turning over. I think at the end of the day, it comes down to Watts per kilo, right? And like if it adds a kilogram of weight to your bike, but then it saves you five watts, then that's five watts per kilo gained. You don't get to five watts per kilo, but you get what I'm saying. Yeah. Yes. If you add weight, but it saves you rolling resistance, then there's a case where even in climbing, it is faster. It's also weight and momentum is not a bad thing. Like it, it's just more stability. It helps you roll over things smoother and smooth out the bumps. Sure, there's, there's always going to be a case where like a smaller wheel, like a pump track, you know, like a smaller wheel is going to dominate that. But again, if you think about majority and when I say endurance off-road riding, most of the time you're just sitting in the saddle, just enjoying life, just chugging along, and a 32 really helps with that. How tall is Nick? He is five, 10. Okay, so he's kind of right on the line of the height that you all have recommended for 32 inch. Exactly. We test everything. And he rides a lot more aggressively than me and he hangs off the back of it. And the 32, he doesn't like it. And that's also why we didn't produce a medium large, titanium 32, heart tail yet. The rigid bike, it's okay. Because with a rigid fork, you can get the bike lower and you're not doing technical stuff on a rigid bike. Like our, our rigid Nova, it's basically like a super gravel bike. It's so fun and fast. I say the jury is still on it, we're still testing it, but that's also why we haven't really released any products for that. But if we go back to the, the bomb shell, the 750D bomb shell. I did, I did a lot of designs and looked into it. And like 750D gets people five, eight and above on the bigger wheel. And that's the vast majority of the population. And like, well, the vast majority of the male population. Right, yeah. Yeah, sorry. Let's caveat that. Because I also, I also feel really bad about this too. Like bike designs are definitely designed for men. And if you go to sea otter, you talk to the product managers. They're all six four for some reason. I don't understand that. That might be why 32 inches is such a big standard. And to be clear, we also design really, really small bikes. Really well. Like I put most of my effort into the small bikes. They have two bottle cages. The John, which is good. Our small is actually a small. It's not like a medium for dudes that, that like, you know, sometimes our small is too small. And I'm like, oh, that sucks, but at least we made it small, you know? And like we still custom make 650D bikes, like 650D mountain bikes. So yes, you're right, the male population. But unfortunately, when you do more mass market stuff, you have to cater to the existing market. And yeah, they're mostly dudes. And I would say 5, 8 and above, even though that's maybe 50% of the population is probably 70 to 80% of the sales. And you know, when you're doing more production stuff, that's the kind of stuff you have to think about. But for custom, we could do whatever we want. So. What have you ridden any of those 750s yet? We are about to embark on a prototype mission. This is the thing that frustrates me is, I've realized with 32, everyone is just monkey-see monkey-do. Like, very few people are actually thinking critically about it. I should say, I do think that really big companies are thinking critically about it. And they have the resources to actually test things. But I also realize that really big companies, like track and specialized, they don't want to shake up the norm. They have no, they're already the kings. They don't want to disrupt the industry. So they let other people kind of goof around, figure it out, and then they'll pick it up once other people have done the legwork to like take the heat for it and establish the standard. But what was interesting to see through that entire process is that no one really knows what they're doing. Like, Maxis released a tire, and then now we have a fork, and now people are kind of testing it. So next year, we'll have bikes. But I think when they test it, they'll realize, like, oh, it's too big for majority of the population. It will work, but not ideal. And what really irritates me is that people are doing 32-inch gravel bikes, which I do agree the bigger wheel size makes a ton of sense on gravel bikes. But the problem is, like, if you're going to develop a new standard for gravel, maybe just like try out the existing standard 750D to see if that makes sense before jumping in onto one standard. And so WTB made some sample 750D tires, and they don't want to produce anymore. So we bought some of the remaining samples. We sourced some carbon rims all the way from Check Republic. And we're going to build some sick titanium gravel prototypes and quotes race them at Lost and Found, I guess, next month. I'm going to try to finish the 100-mileer. It's not really going to be race. It's a race for survival. But we've got to try it out. And on paper, I think the size fits a lot more people and will have a broad or use case. But if most women want to benefit from a taller wheel size, it's got to be 750D. 32 is too big. And if you want a trail tire that won't explode, you probably want a 750D. If you want just like a gravel bike that is good on the road, it's not like a truck, then you probably want 70D. So these are all theories. We'll see how it goes. We'll revisit in a year or two. If it's wrong, we can delete this podcast. But if it's right, maybe we can time stamp it and say, yeah. See, we knew. We knew. Yeah, exactly. Great. Well, Daniel, this was so much fun. And yeah, can't wait to see your video that comes out of Racing Lost and Found. I'm excited to make the bike. I'm a little scared to race the race, but you got to do it. Yeah, put it through its paces and report back. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for tuning in to the Radavis podcast. If you haven't checked out the site yet, be sure to visit theRadavis.com for more bicycle reportage, gear reviews, maker profiles, hot takes, and more. You can also find us on YouTube where you can watch Daniel's coverage of the 2026 Seattle Classic Expo. I've also added links to the show notes to Daniel's other reportage for the site, including his 2025 story about visiting every boutique steel factory at the Taipei Cycle Show. If you enjoyed the show, sharing this episode with a friend or leaving us a review would be much appreciated. But what really moves the needle is signing up for a membership. For as little as $5 a month, you can support the Radavis, one of a kind coverage of the most radical stories in cycling. As we celebrate the Radavis 20th anniversary this year, it's the best way you could wish us a happy birthday. Until next time.