I think that what muddies the angleset experiments is the change in the bar height and bar reach. Going from 66 to 65 deg will bring the bars 5-10mm lower and 10-15mm closer. IMO, moving the bars closer and lower neutralizes the slacker angle.
To me, higher bars and a stretched position give me more confidence than 1deg slacker HTA.
I bet if you were able to keep the cockpit the same, you would be able to notice the HTA change.
I agree with you for general riding - but for steep terrain or areas with a lot of g-outs I think hardtail head tube angles fall into the ‘no replacement for displacement’ category. Cockpit can be adjusted for with a longer stem (
) which picks the bars up as well.
Works also makes reach adjust headsets, it would be pretty cool to ride a -1.5° headset and then a +5mm headset back to back and see how they each fare.
True story, my kid (now 10, then 9) partially buckled a downtube on his full suspension bike, I think on a big g-out. I had been too lazy to build him a new bike and just put a longer stem/dropper/riser bar on to make it fit, and he’d gone from 45 to 75 pounds and gotten much more aggressive on the bike. So anyway, my bad.
The funny part is that he never noticed, I just was looking at the bike one day and thought, “wow, the head angle looks weird”. I grabbed an angle finder to check. 74 degrees (it was supposed to be 66).
He had been riding it for at least a week like that and didn’t notice 8 degrees of head tube angle. Hilarious.
-Walt
My other bike is a Bianchi…. No tires or brakes but it’s a grass carving machine! Whoever drops in from the highest spot and makes the bottom turn wins the right to modify the bike with one performance decreasing mod.
And a few pics of my DH-E. I was curious what it could be if the norms weren’t respected. It’s interesting and fun but would never replace a DH or enduro bike for me.
I tried to tie in the main pivot and shockmount into the motor mount for strength. I used Squint Eye FEA principles for this design.
It does glow in the dark. Scared me to death one night in the garage after I killed the lights.
It’s a Prismatic powder: Glowing Yellow with a Super Chrome base coat
I absolutely love this. What a shredder of a bike!!!
@liberationfab It is a great bike and puts up with so much abuse!
I just started checking out this forum and I’m glad to see that it’s gaining traction. It looks like it will be a great resource. I figured I’d use this thread as an excuse to make my first post.
It’s not an MTB, or metal, oh the shame! But it is my baby. This will be my third season owning this bike. I haven’t kept many longer, but when I do, I’m usually not riding them any more.
We do not discriminate against material or tire size!
Beautiful bike, the taper on the top tube is so nice.
Waited a few weeks to post here because I didn’t have a bike to post yet! This is the frame I made during a three day speedrun framebuilding course with Jonathan Thompson. I kept it simple to make the chances of actually finishing the frame higher, so no brake mounts and the fork is not made by me either, it is a Surly long haul trucker. As for kilometers ridden, probably around 40 or so, hah, I’ve built it up last week but still struggling a bit with after effects of Covid, will get to a proper shake down soon enough.
Here is a pic (okay, three pics) of my personal gravel bike. It’s an early iteration of a semi-stock model I call the Cinder. It’s a very mtb-informed geo and spec, but with road levers/brakes and a SRAM/Ratio mullet drivetrain. Never liked traditional road bikes on the pavement, let alone the dirt, but this bike really works for me (primarily a mountain biker). I built this about two years ago and have been riding it much more in the past year since discovering the wealth of amazing gravel we have nearby in southern Oregon and northern California.
This is personal bike number one. It was the first frame I built. An OS lugged bike using Columbus “Spirit for lugs” and Llewellyn lugs and dropouts. Ultimately was built with a too short head tube but still a great bike to ride. Classic road geo with 73 deg HA and 56 trail, 580 FC and 415 CS.
This was number 2. A bike I built to challenge myself and also try to learn some new techniques. It uses a bilam technique for the loop styled sleeves. Similar geo to number one but a smidge longer and taller and 420CS.
Number 3. This one I spent a solid 3 hour session with the fitter I work with and went through quite a bit. It’s built to perfectly match my morphology and ended up being a sublime bike to ride. Again classic road race geo which lends to a bike that handles intuitively with no quirks. Quite adept at racing crits and bombing high speed decents but docile enough to punch out long hard kms.
and lastly as seen a few times here is the Oisin Trail Bike. This was a bike taht I had been working towards the whole time and really pushed every aspect of building frames. It has just had an refresh and slight mods and will be painted soon.
It’s been cold, wet, and California is falling apart thanks to the rain. I had not touched a mountain bike in 4 months.
This is a new prototype that @Neuhaus_Metalworks glued together with the TIG. I was so excited that I forgot to level the cranks for the photo 
The bike has some minor tweaks to the Solstice geometry but a completely new CAD workflow under the hood. I was also testing out a new finishing technique using Krink Graffiti paints. I’ll post some info on the finishing thread if it works out.
I love the way the top tube and down tube of the blue and white bike meet the head tube at the same angle. I’m still building my first Mountain Bike but I always wanted to try that. Maybe in the future.
Thanks! I like it too. I wasn’t planning on using that tube, but I had one laying around, so why not.
This is my second tig welded frame. I was in a hurry finish the build and to ride it in the European Cycle Messenger Championships in 2016.
When build was ready and I started putting everything on, I noticed I didn’t leave space for the chainwheel 
so I found a large diameter piece of stainless tube, cut out a slice and then turned the angle grinder on the frame to make space for my new yoke. Booyah!
Me and the bike at the ECMC in Copenhagen. I did ok
Bike after paint
After riding with a carbon fork for a while I calculated I wouldn’t mess up the geometry too bad with a steel fork and some more tire room in the front. By some god’s miracle I managed to build a straight fork even though my wooden jig caught on fire while brazing. I rode the fork for a half a year before I slipped while walking the bike to bike storage, fell on the bike and the other dropout broke off. Fixed that.
It’s actually quite a comfy winter ride with tubeless ~40mm gravel kings.
Seeing all these pretty hardtails makes me think I should put together my own little XC Whippet some time soon!
Recently I did build myself a “Modern Classic” road bike with 2x10 gearing and gasp RIM BRAKES! Amazingly, the world did not spontaneously combust. Here’s the result of the effort!
More details can be found here in a writeup on my website.
Enjoy!
Here’s my 26” skatepark bike. It’s the second 26” I’ve built myself, and it is so much fun. The first one buckled on the top tube right on a butt, this one has a straight .9mm top tube.
It’s got a weird combo of bmx and mtb parts - bmx head tube, 10mm bmx front hub, 10mm mtb rear hub, mid bmx bb shell and a 27.2 seat tube.
I think my only regret with this bike is going for the mtb dropouts (my previous one had 14mm dropouts). I thought I would want a brake to ride pumptracks or dirt jumps more, but I have only put a brake on it twice. 
As cool as the camo Cult x Vans tires are, they’re just for photos haha they’re way too heavy.
