John was looking for gravel bike that had a traditional steel ride quality. I built him a butted titanium Allroad in 2014. He still has that bike and loves the smoother ride, but he was ready to jump to disc brakes. He spent some time on a few other frames and didn’t care for the stiff and overbearing ride.
John’s bike is built with moderate diameters of Columbus Life tubing. The frame also uses the Whiskey No. 9 Flatmount CX fork with a straight 1 1/8th steer tube. This allows me to use a smaller headtube to keep the weight of the frame down and tune the ride for more compliance.
Shimano GRX is a newer ultegra level group that has the chainring/cassette adjusted for bigger diameter tires. It also looks great and works wonderfully.
Chris King Headset and R45 hubs are always classy and will last for years.
Ollie at Dark Matter Finishing laid down a luscious three coat metallic red liquid paint job. John wanted to keep the branding/graphics to a minimum so he went with a non color fill logo.
