To those of a particular age (mine/ old) there is a certain something about titanium. Back in the day It was the holy grail of bike afficionados – unaffordable, enviable, ‘unobtainium’. Bike magazines ran images of centrefold dreams with shiny, slightly golden hued bare metal tubes, strong, light, not cheap. There was something about the way you didn’t paint a ti frame, even in an era of real graphic and paint expression, you left it looking natural. It didn’t rust, it hardly marked, it was pretty hard to dent, and when you did scratch it, you rubbed it with a scouring pad and it looked like new again in minutes. As gorgeous as they were, you couldn’t say that of a Klein Moonrise Fade paint job in 1992.
Through the late eighties and into the early nineties titanium still reigned supreme as the stand alone material of choice for the bike catalogue range topper. This was perhaps more evident in mountain biking than road, but there were still ti road bikes being rolled out from the big hitters of the material and repainted in pro tour colours surprisingly late on within the timelines of racing in some cases. By the turn of the century it had of course had it’s day as the go to choice for the high end. Aluminium had pretty much relegated steel to the far reaches of niche and the new black wonder material coming in was getting through it’s infancy and making real ground in people’s aspiration for riding the weave.
Being partial to a bit of titanium myself. I’ve popped in see to local ti experts Enigma for a bit of a snoop around at how the stuff is actually put together. I’m here to see how stories of meticulous and painstaking preparation for even more laborious welding and finishing pan out in the flesh.
Sitting in a quiet industrial estate in East Sussex, Enigma’s the brain child of ex distributor and long term bike industry man Jim Walker. He and his family have been involved in this wonder metal since 2006 and have it seems timed it perfectly for what could be described as a new wave in regard for the metal.
Some production is out sourced but the custom ti road bike requests are made here, in Britain, one at a time, by hand. That’s worth celebrating in itself but seeing the care and attention and skill being applied to the various tube lengths surrounding me on every surface, in every state of undress, it’s something worth being really proud of. When you think titanium, you might generally head west and look at America to the daddies of the industry – the forefathers. Or east and think rightly or wrongly of mass production and outsourcing, but to know these guys are here in a little corner of southern England slowly mitreing, welding and polishing this special metal for a waiting audience in 2014, well who’d have thought that would be the case ten years ago.
Standing in the small booth in the centre of the factory I ask Jim’s son Joe, in between laborious welds, about the material itself. What’s the draw of ti for the people behind the mask?
“The challenge is to make a frame as beautiful as possible. The finished article is bare for all to see with no paint to hide any imperfections. The striving for perfection is what drives me.”
Later that evening chatting with Darren Crisp, the American builder turning out things of two wheeled beauty from the Tuscan hills of north Italy, I ask him the same thing … “The appeal is the challenge. The challenge being that it is notoriously hard to work with? “Well, I don’t think it’s that difficult, per se. It does require patience and determination which, by today’s standards, is hard to come by, titanium, like living in Italy, continually teaches me patience, it won’t let you plan your day and have a schedule. Like an Italian meal, it wants to be cherished and discussed. It wants to be an event.” Brad DeVaney of one of the originals, Litespeed explains, “It’s not that there is great difficulty, but a different set of rules when compared to working with steel or various aluminum common to frame building.The greatest precautions are to prevent contamination. It can come at you in various ways. Let’s say your shop builds with steel or aluminum as well as titanium: The cutting and grinding tools cannot be shared among materials. Embedded material on the tools becomes transferred onto your tube set or parts and will contaminate the weld. The other obvious contaminant is oxygen. When welding, the hot metal must be shielded from oxygen. If not, the oxygen is absorbed into the metal causing a very brittle condition. Therefore, we must be extremely careful and diligent with regards to our heat input and shielding of oxygen.”
Jon Cariveau from US titanium masters Moots explains the pay offs for all that extra hard work – “The Ride quality – through hand picking size-specific tubes for the given rider and use of the bike. The durability is second to none, it won’t rust and won’t degrade over the life of the bike. Also, ti does have that ‘magical’ ride quality….much like steel, where the bike has soul, ….but with titanium you get a stiffer, lighter, more durable product. Also, there is the expression of an art form that you can see in the welds, the fit, finish and the small touches we sweat over – there’s the pay off for us. “
They build steel here at Enigma too. In fact I end up having a grabbed sandwich lunch in the presence of the legendary Geoff Roberts no less and as cheese and pickle turns to talk of late eighties longing for a White Spider mountain bike, it is revealed they also have a frame building academy here with a mind to passing on these oft overlooked skills that helped put us Brits on the map and firmly in the timeline of the bicycle. Wondering about the real world questions of titanium vs steel I ask Joe about the differences in production. “The highest quality steel tube sets are more challenging to build now as wall thicknesses are ever decreasing and you need to be very competent with a torch or tig welder to avoid trashing an expensive set of tubes. But generally speaking, he tells me you just can’t cut corners with titanium, it’s not as forgiving as steel. it behaves differently during the welding process and it takes time to understand it’s idiosyncrasies. it took me several years before I felt comfortable and considered myself a ti frame builder.”
What about the different grades of titanium? It’s all numbers to me, but what does that actually translate into? Darren Crisp – “All things designed equally, there are a few nuances between the grades. With bikes, you’re really only talking about three predominant grades: CP (commercially pure grades 1-4) Gr5 (6/4) and Gr9 (3/2.5). the CP material is pretty soft and malleable as it is not alloyed. Ti gets its strength when combined with other metals like aluminum and vanadium but once built into a frame, it’s hard to notice. I started out doing quite a bit of repairs for companies that built frames with CP titanium and I could bend the tubes on the alignment table without much lever force. Very soft, indeed. The Gr5 and 9 frames are a much different story. When they are completed, they require much more force to be cold set or manipulated in any way. The stiffness of the drivetrain is really centred around the chainstays and the downtube, so you really want to work with diameters and wall thicknesses. I only use GR9 tubes for my main tubes as these are ASTM aerospace quality. They are way more than necessary for a bike frame and you can make a performance-oriented frame completely from CP if you spec good tube sections and develop the geometry accordingly. All of the above titanium alloys will give you a definite cushion to the high-frequency vibrations of the road which is where this material really shines.”
And what of the mythical ride quality? Is that true, or just age old guff? – Jon from Moots – “For the most part yes it does ride in that characteristic way. But it can vary from builder to builder depending on tube selection of diameter and wall thickness and philosophies.” Enigma’s Joe adds – “The material has this in built ability to absorb road shock. A well designed ti frame will deliver a super smooth and comfortable ride quality but can also provide enough stiffness to give entertaining performance.” Brad from Litespeed – “Today’s titanium rides in the way we loved it in its heyday. We regained the measured and expected stiffness while retaining vertical compliance. Today’s cyclists (some of whom didn’t experience what titanium offered long ago) are realising the benefits properly designed titanium bikes can deliver.”
Looking across at the bundles of bike laid out flat like an Airfix kit, flat packed waiting for assembly and I wonder about the actual cost of this stuff. I mean it’s a pretty expensive and therefore considered choice to get a hand built frame made out of this stuff down the road in your own country. It dawns on me that it might be the cost of the sheer amount of workmanship perhaps over just an inherently expensive material in the first place that puts it up there cost wise with state of the art tour winning carbon… Darren Crisp – “you’re looking at a huge range of costs due to material origin, quality and specification. I would suspect that the raw costs of ti compared to steel are from 3-5x that of a high quality steel. This depends on construction method (lugged, fillet, tig) and also considers the cost of machining the raw material. Titanium is a burden on tooling so a set of dropouts in ti are usually double that of steel. Some butted ti companies request a premium for their tubes because of the labor-intensive butting process which can be achieved in steel for a fraction of the cost.
What about where it’s sourced? The general acceptance seems to be the more American the tubing, the better it must be. Is there really a preference of sourcing? There are definitely opinions both ways but Darren Crisp believes it’s not that cut and dried about East vs West.. “No, not really. As long as the material is certified ASTM and you can have a mill spec, it’s all good. I’ve had reputable American companies send me product that was not from their own production and I think this is a growing trend to keep costs down. I’ve had to return some material on occasion because it doesn’t surpass testing, but this is rare.”
This rings true here in Sussex too, Jim tells me they’ve not seen any tangible difference between their far east sourced titanium and the American stuff.
Walking back past Max, the man with the mitre touch, I notice he’s still perfecting the leading edges of a down tube so it sits against it’s head tube perfectly with no gaps when it’s welded. I ask if that’s a structural requirement or not really necessary seeing as no one’s going to ever actually see it and he tells me he just likes to make things as close to perfect as he can and anyway, he knows what it looks like underneath. A bit of OCD there perhaps but I can think of worse character traits for the chap making my next bike frame. This, yet one more indication that it’s true that steel is quicker, or at least not so particular to work than titanium. Darren Crisp – “ It’s a lot slower. With titanium, you can’t skip or leave out any of the preparation processes.titanium want’s to be the life of the party. You have to address that and pay attention to all the protocols of correct tube preparation and welding technique. Skip something and she’ll call you on it. It’s kind of reassuring in a way. With steel you have a little bit of room, as long as you’re careful when welding or brazing. With ti, you have to consider even how you hold the tubes and what the air flow in the room is doing. Any traces of nitrogen or oxygen in the weld pool and you’re frame can quickly turn into a barstool.” Jon from Moots – “The two are very similar in the mitreing area, but once you get to welding, it’s a different world. Titanium requires a skill set that is a step or two above steel. Now that doesn’t mean steel is easy, just that titanium is that much harder to get a feel for and with most titanium it is un-painted so there is no hiding a bad weld.”
It’s fair to say that while ti is not the angel at the top of the tree it may have once been, it is experiencing somewhat of a renaissance and it seems to be a fairly level headed one. Not faddish like it could be but instead it seems a whole new generation is being drawn toward the pull of the non magnetic wonder metal. New techniques are being undertaken and old traditions re-appreciated alike. The handmade bike shows are evidence of a new leaning towards low production numbers and high quality. The personal touch is starting to stand out again in the wake of the unstoppable march of technology and mass production ability. Sure, bikes are probably better, safer, faster, lighter stiffer and more endorsed than ever before, but as carbon comes into it’s own as a true magic material it is also bound to the mainstream and the mainstream can only support so much cool. If you want individuality you tend to have to go and find it for yourself and if you do go looking, perhaps start locally, be that Steamboat Springs Colorado, Chattanooga, Tennesseee or Sussex.