The CNC machining geniuses over at Phil Wood & Co. always have some shiny goodies in their booth. New for this year are anodized quick release skewers. The lever is aluminum and stainless hardware is used. Because the serrated clamping surface is stainless, the grooves shouldn’t flatten out for a good long while. Retail will be $99 a pair.
A Phil Wood surprise and updates from White Industries past the break.
The Phil Wood BB’s are now available in aluminum and come in several anodized colors. They including anodized spacers, and they have interchange center sleeves for easy upgrade later. The anodization keeps the BB from seizing, but on the polished version, they have taken the extra step to use a teflon impregnation process for the same effect.
There is usually a surprise or two hanging out in their booth every year. This year it was a prototype headset. Phil Wood is known for quality, and with any new product they develop, it has to meet a very high standard. In the case of their headset, they looked far and wide for bearings that would live up to their expectation, but everything they found on the market already wouldn’t pass their testing. So, they are now in talks with a manufacture to work out a bearing solution. Once that’s in place, we should see these showing up for public consumption. No word on pricing or release date yet.
White Industries has worked with Shimano to update up their disc hub with a Centerlock option. The samples at the show were not the final product however, as the tooling is being finalized. The option should be available in late October or early November.
Also at the White booth were eight very nice looking anodized color options. All 8 (including their existing black and silver) will be stocked coming late October and will show up in red, orange, pink, purple, blue, black, green, and silver gold.