Looks amazing. Dig the abrasive for tapered HT.
I was scratching my head on what the little covers were down by the main pivot, then remembered you started using 8pins dropper. How has it been to work with that dropper?
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Thanks mate. Pretty happy with how it came up. I thought black was going to be a bit boring but was able to add some detail bliang to make it opo a little.
I love the 8pins on my bike but far out it’s expensive, which is why young Jack just ended up on a normal dropper post. He has teh option later of installing one though.
Love the details and great result!
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Tons of great detail there.
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Photo bomb, love it.
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That looks so good.
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Yeah this is outrageously good
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Looks amazing. And quite light, what tubing did you use?
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It’s an experiment. Not intended for customers and I will elaborate over time in my social posts etc. I’ve gone for pretty much a tubeset intend for say gravel applications and here is my rational……or judgement as it’s put elsewhere 
…….a gravel frame is generally intended to take on some pretty rough terrain and do it all loaded so I’m looking at the anecdotal data rather empirical to suggest a
38 7/5/7 DT
SL 46/56 HT
32 8/5/8 TT
31.7-32.5 7/5/9 ext butt ST.
Zona butted road S Bend stays
Zona Road S Bend 16/7 stays.
SS T47 BB
3D prints have been pushed to trim weight.
The shock is impossibly light and suprised me in my hand.
This is not my normal thing but this is an exercise in what I can get away with. No FEA done just careful consideration and judegment on what I have seen building the bigger bikes. This is more of a R&D for myself to see what is possible plus hopefully others get to learn a few things from it as well. My intuition is I can get another 200-300 grams out which would be mental and not a bike for mass consumption but more for a refined rider in a specific setting.
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You should take it down the hardline course ;). Joking aside, its really interesting experiment, thanks for sharing.
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Such a tease 
(I know it takes time to test)
And ditto on how good it looks, how the two angles (one formed between the seatstays and silver mount + that other front triangle mount) line up really did it for me though a beautiful ride overall
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The bike is absolutely beautiful. It makes me want to build an xc bike, the most xcish bike I have is a 150mm hardtail.
What thickness plate did you use for the shock mount tabs on the frame? Looks thin, but it is hard to tell. I’m interested to hear how this holds up. If I built an xc bike I’ve always thought I’d like to see how light I could make it just for fun, but my main concern has always been the shock mount and having it welded to a butted tube.
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Cheers. There are a couple things that bug me about it but I won’t mention as it’s purely a personal aesthetic thing and once seen can’t be unseen 
. The shock mount plate is 1.6 mild steel and goes into the side of the tube, almost tangential, so most of the force is going into the strongest part fo the tube ie, the side wall in this instance. Also in this layout most of the force on the tube is in the axial direction.
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Love that your pushing the envelope for weight! 2629g with Shock is Incredible! What’s the frame only weight?
I’ve always assumed you’d need a vertical shock to be able to push the limits of TT and DT wall thickness. I’ll be interested to see the longevity of the upper shock mount / tt on the .5 wall. Sounds like you’ve designed the mount to spread the load nicely but .5 wall seems thin in my head.
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Not sure of frame only weight. I will do a full break down when I get it back from Shimano next month and then after a couple months of hard riding/testing.
I think the top tube is too light to be honest but am willing to go out and ride it to see how long it lasts. I won’t be taking it easy on it either. Plenty of trails here to push the limits but obviously there are limits to what you’d ride here on a bike like this.
There are some things that could be done to support the tube better that wouldn’t add many grames but you could argue to just go with a thicker wall. While I am a huge proponent of designing the structure via shape and wall thickness etc. sometimes having extra bracing and layering is a better solution.
The ultimate would be to be able to get full custom butting of the tubes but MOQ’s make it an expensive setup unless I knew I had orders to cover it.
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Have you seen Firefly’s CNC Lathe they use for external butting? It’s a pretty incredible set up.
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Yeah, it’s pretty awesome. It’s so fiddly doing the custom butting on the lathe. Would be cheaper to order the tubes than buy their setup though. Haha