Mmmmm….Steeeeeel.

So I’ll be bluntly honest with you — when I started learning the craft of framebuilding, I owned exactly one steel bike and it was the first I’d owned in, quite literally, more than a decade. That bike, a Surly Cross-Check, has since been stripped down and the frameset sold in order to fund stuff for this little business of mine. My fleet was that, two scandium Salsas, and a Cervelo P2C (carbon).

A mitered down tube, getting ready to join it to the head tube.

When I started this little venture, my plan was to learn how to build with steel, and then move on to stainless and titanium as my primary metals. In the army, we had a quip about how “no plan survives first contact with reality.” That holds true. I still plan to start dabbling with stainless and titanium in the future, but that’s a few years off, yet, and the availability of a Pallas Athena from those materials is even further out.

The reasons for this are two-fold. First, I have fallen in love with steel. It’s a great material, and don’t let any carbon-peddling shop salesman tell you otherwise. With a wide variety of alloys, tube specifications, sub-components such as lugs and dropouts, and the ability to easily mix and match, I can craft a frame that balances comfort, affordability, and performance for the same price as a decent carbon frame. There are those that will complain about the weight, and while they’re right, they overlook the fact that there’s a wide variety of lightweight parts on the market that make it very easy to take a steel frame down to, and even below, the UCI mandated lower weight limit for a bike.

Secondly, it’s got so much character — you’ve heard the “lively” remarks, I’m sure. It’s true. A good steel frame is going to allow you to feel the road (or singletrack) and not get the shit bashed out of you like you would on an aluminum frame. And it’s durable — if it falls over, you aren’t going to be shelling out hundreds to repair it like you would, say, carbon. It gives you warning before it fails, unlike aluminum.

When you hear me chattering on and on about replacing my Cross-Check, or getting my Salsas phased-out in favor of steel, it’s not just because I feel that I should be riding my own stuff, but that I think steel is the better material for it.