by Igor
Our friends from
Gravel and Grind in Frederick, MD built up a Piolet for a friend who works on a commercial tree farm. Be sure to check G&G out on
instagram or stop in for a delicious pick-me-up.
"It's a big and rugged place with lots of rocks and pot holes where old trees were. She started riding her bike there as a way to stay warm in the winter when going to check on trees. She had an old ratty aluminum mountain bike, but her rad boss just approved this purchase. Mainly what she does is ride around with it, pruning stuff (hence the mad max saw scabbard which it'll have next week), inventorying stuff, tagging trees and things like that. She'll occasionally use it for real mountain biking and maybe some bike packing.
I built it with 9 speed thumbies set up friction because she hates maintenance, TRP brakes, 2.5 Maxxis DH tires for durability and mud clearance, and low gearing because the going there is rough and slow."
The Radavist put together a
great photoset of a Piolet with a titanium cockpit, meaty tires, Klamper brakes, and double
Mojave Cages.
Lastly, keen VO observers may have seen a silver 1x crankset on a
previous blog post. We received a new sample which is beefier, smoother spinning, and has much better chain retention (thanks to a narrow-wide ring). Sorry, no full drive side photos; that's due to the VO Skunkworks division' rules. The red bottom bracket cups are growing on me and give a really nice contrast on the blue frame. What do you think?
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7 comments:
You asked:
The red bottom bracket cups are ugly. Honestly, any external bottom bracket cup is going to be ugly. The least ugly would be silver, or something that matches the crank and derailer, preferably silver.
The black crankset is ugly.
On the first bike, the black chainring on the silver crank is ugly.
Black is an ugly color for bikes and bike components, one of the few colors that does not work well on bicycles. I guess battleship grey might be worse, unless maybe you made it glossy, with red pinstripes.
If I see 50 bikes and one is black, that's OK. No more.
All bicycle disc brakes are ugly. Necessary sometimes, but inevitably ugly.
wow. That guy was pretty angry. I think its a pretty nice build.. and threaded BB's are still totally the best.
I've been very happily running a 1x7 or 1x8 setup on my commuting/local get-a-round bikes for years; I'm glad to see others embracing the idea. Maybe I'm not crazy after all (or at least maybe that's not a symptom...)? Anyway, I look forward to being able to get a reasonably priced narrow-wide chainring to make my rigs even more foolproof. I hope you'll be stocking at least a 110 version? Would asking for a 130 BCD be silly? I don't really care much about the color of my bike parts; given a choice I'll generally opt for silver but I'm not going to get cranky about it.
Any chance those cranks you mention being in skunkworks will actually make it to market some day??? My Piolet is coming together now and I'd really like shiny cranks
* Anodized red components are for kiddie BMX bikes. In time the novelty wears off.
* Noir does not do it for me unless the frame were silver or a very bright (almost neon) color.
* Grips and saddle must always be the same color. It's unprofessional business dress to show up at work with your belt and shoes not matching -- the same is true for the parts where your body comes in contact with the bike (viz. saddle and grips).
* A mix of Noir and polished silver components does not work. Pick one or the other (preferable silver/polished aluminum) and go with it entirely.
* Ignoring the frame color, when mixing colored components, use a single color as a dominant color scheme and the other only as an accent color.
* Black tires on black rime have too much of a bad-a** look. We come to VO for more polite company. Notice that Piolet and polite are very similar. Just because one is able to assault the mountain with the bike, does not mean that our eyes have to be assaulted with it too.
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I Like It ☮
Nice looking bikes. I like a little color tossed in for contrast.
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