Nicked from my response to a Request for Quote:
“Good to hear from you, thanks for the beer. No need to feel sorry about the slow down here in my basement. There are plenty of projects I could have kept myself busy with had the option of getting out on the bike not been so much more appealing, been waiting on the lighting strike of an order to spur me on to get back to the shop routine. Let me know what you are thinking of and I’ll get you a quote. MTB building is my favorite because in the pantheon of trail riding glory is a myriad range of terrain type and riding styles and the build/design of the bike has a huge influence on the bikes ability to perform to your expectation. It is one thing to build a bike that offers a comfortable neutral riding position and predictable handling as you would for a sport style road bike, there are more factors to consider if the rider’s intent may be to wheelie drop off of boulders or cruise fast on fire roads.
I’ll be real curious about what sort of parts you’d imagine using, the kind of trails you typically ride and what sort of bikes you’ve been using and your expectations of the new frames performance and versatility. Of course to design the bike I’ll also need to know all the regular old fit parameters as well but that won’t effect the price as I remember you being well within middle of the midget-sasquatch range.
My current trail riding involves a lot of punchy accelerations and moves with my center of gravity behind the rear axle so I haven’t personally adopted the full 29′er set up. On my personal bikes my preference is to run a 26″ rear and 29″ front, it looks a bit odd but in addition to giving you the smaller wheel’s superior strength and acceleration in rear and the larger front wheel’s improved ability to roll over obstacles there is a unique handling characteristic this design bestows; with the line from axle to axle non parallel to the ground the trail effectively changes as the bike is set at an angle, the effect is that the bike handles more and more like a downhill bike the further you lean it into a turn. It was a great idea when carver did it, trek tried it but couldn’t sell it for the fact that a straight up ’29er works pretty darn great for most people anyway, just thought I’d put it out there as an option.
Any way to make a long story short a single speed BBW ATB frame wouldtypically run you between 00 and 00 depending on tubing/bottom bracket/dropout/brake mount options with a typical finish (single color powder coat, no polishing) Shiny stainless and wet paint are more. An Igleheart New England Sectional fork powdered to match the frame at 0 compliments the ride and aesthetic of my frames so well that they are my preferred spec until I get my own fork jig off the drawing board. Of course I can build around any fork you might prefer, I just need the critical dimensions of rake and axle to crown length ahead of designing the frame.
A 50% deposit will get you a pdf of the design to sign off on within 10 days, current turn around on a frame will be about six weeks. I can offer competitive pricing on full or partial build kits as well.”
