After almost 2 years of back and forth, our stainless steel prototype frames have been fabricated. They are now at Toussaint Global HQ in Calgary, built up and ready for some serious test riding. The first prototype has the working name of “Pavé”. It is a 700C, disc-brake frame made of double butted Carpenter Custom 630 stainless steel. Carpenter Custom 630 is a martensitic “precipitation/age-hardening” stainless steel which has high strength, hardness and “excellent corrosion resistance” good enough for nuclear reactor components,missile fittings, and jet engine parts … which is good enough for us! For those of you who really want to geek-out, the engineering datesheet for the tubing can be found here at the Carpenter site http://cartech.ides.com/datasheet.aspx?i=103&e=54&c=TechAr. The weight of the bare 56cm prototype frame is 1920 grams and the uncut fork is 924 grams.

The geometry is laid back-ish with a bottom bracket (bottom bracket drop 68mm) a bit lower than typical cyclo-cross frames. It has clearances to accommodate 45mm wide fenders and braze-on fixtures to attach fenders to.

We designed an all stainless steel with a twin plate fork crown that might be the first one of it’s kind ever made.

The rear seat stay has a matching single plate mono-stay.

Some basic stats:
Top Tube 31.8mm Dia 0.6/.045/0.6
Seat Tube 31.8mm Dia 0.8/0.5/0.8
Down Tube 38.1mm Dia 0.7/0.4/0.7
Top Tube Length (effective length) 563mm
Seat Tube Length 507mm
Bottom Bracket Drop 68mm
Wheelbase 982mm
Head Tube Angle 73.5 deg
Seat Tube Angle 72.5 deg
Trail 45mm
Rear Axle Width 135mm

The second prototype is a 650B frame based on the same low trail geometry as our cro-mo 650B Velo Routier frame but made of Carpenter stainless steel with twin plate crown fork as well, disc brakes and 1-1/8″ Aheadset. I will have a blog post with photos next week.

The plan is ride both of them hard ourselves and share them out to some local riders. Then we will send them off to a few of our dealers for feedback this summer. If all goes well, we will place a small order for delivery in the New Year. Price has not been finalized but we are hoping frame and matching fork will retail for under $2000 USD.