Ritchey has made chromoly and titanium breakaway bikes for a while. He’s even dipped into carbon fiber and allowed others to mix-and-match the materials for a show bike.
But it’s never been done in stainless steel until now. Stijl Cycles licensed the coupling system to build this bike for a customer. Why? Because the customer wanted a stainless steel frame he could travel with. He liked the Ritchey breakaway system, and had a steel bike but it scratched too easily. He tried titanium but didn’t like the ride feel, so he found someone to make him a stainless version.
Stijl’s founder/builder, Hinmaton Hisler, said Ritchey didn’t want to make it, so he figured out how to do it. Here’s why it was so hard…
The trick was that all stainless tubing comes prebutted, and you can’t just cut it anywhere and have enough strength to handle the connector. So, the bottom section with the connector is machined to sleeve 5mm into the downtube, reinforcing the joint and providing a thicker tube section to handle the stresses.
The downtube section also sleeves into the lower portion. A clamp encapsulates the ridges on both pieces and holds them together securely.
Up top is a similar story, just with a different attachment mechanism and a seatpost that provides much of the support. The angled cut helps prevent twisting.
It’s not a cheap upcharge. Hinmaton says it’s hard to do and stainless isn’t cheap. This happens to be the first stainless bike he’s done. He made all the parts and tubes, then Frank the Welder (formerly with Serotta, now at No22) put it together.
They’re also working on a titanium version for No22, along with this project:
This seat tube topper was cast from titanium, then machined, so it’s a single piece.
Originally they wanted to machine it from a solid piece of billet, but it wasn’t cost effective. Plus, the casting let them get their logo’s nice shield shape and groove on the front, matching the headtube (below). Casting also reduced the amount of machining, leaving only the two large bores to be cut out and then the whole thing was polished.
Hinmaton’s other company, Loco Machine, makes this insanely heavy and flat alignment table.
He makes frame building parts for others, too.
