Bo’s 953 climber’s special frameset

I previously built Bo a gravel style machine; this time around he requested a lightweight build for climbing. One of the lightest steel tubesets is the stainless 953 from Reynolds, so this was chosen for the front triangle and chainstays. Bo’s fit requires a fairly long headtube, so to keep the weight low it was machined down and externally butted, and then cut away with a carbon reinforcement insert.

A custom shaped wishbone seatstay is lighter than the standard offerings. Paragon Machine Works provided the rear dropouts and BB shell, both of which were modified to reduce their weight. The bike will be built up with SRAM eTap, so no gear cable stops required. The rear brake cable runs internally through the toptube.

After the tubes were cut and mitred, they went out for the laser engraving of the logos and Bo’s name, plus he requested my signature on the toptube. Then everything was carefully brazed together. To continue the stainless theme, I built a custom lightweight stem from the same material, which came out at 130g. A machined stainless headset spacer perfectly matches up to the stem.

Enve no longer produce the 1.0 road fork, which was their lightest offering – I had one left in stock, which had the logos removed to leave it a simple matte black. Cane Creek don’t offer their lightweight AER headset in an EC34 variant. So I used their 110 headset but swapped the bearings for the AER type which saved a few grams. An Extralite Ultrastar steerer wedge and an aluminium bolt for the topcap maintain the lightweight theme.

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