Sponge said:Remember that topic I posted about crown ideas a while back? Well I'm
sure quite a lot of you doubted that I'd ever get this done, but here's
to prove the doubters wrong:
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OT4 Titanium, hand-made in the Triton factory in Russia. After I put
forward my first design and after lots of small modifications after
looking at and borrowing beneficial aspects from current frames on the
market, I present to you the new Triton Sponge frame.
Right now, I have no idea of retail price, but production models won't
be made until these 2 have been given extensive testing and thrashing
to see if it's up to the stresses of trials. I must emphasise that I
myself am a trials rider and I designed this for trials (but also made
it friendly for those who wanted to glide). The corners of the crown
have been rounded so there is even less chance of getting leg-bash
during sloppy sidehops. I've also included a small plate under the
seattube neck so as to prevent grime and mud from burrowing itself into
the frame's tubes.
I know a lot of flatlanders will complain, but seriously, this wasn't
designed for flat. It was designed for purely trials (but with a
glide-able crown), I strongly wanted to avoid a simple round crown
partly for aesthetic reasons and also because this crown design is one
of the strongest I could go for considering the thickest tubing I could
use was 1mm thick. A flat crown like on the Black domina or KH would
not work well with 1mm thick tubing, hence I scrapped that idea a long
time ago.
The bearing holders look similar to those of the 2004 KH, as it would
be so expensive to produce fully machined bearing holders (without any
welds). I have put threads in the bottom half holders rather than those
top half ones welded to the legs because, say if you strip threads
somehow... (which is very hard to do with titanium compared to
aluminium) then you wouldn't be totally screwed as you can just replace
the bottom half holders. So this frame is therefore totally threadless,
but incorporates a KH-style bearing holder system, (only reverse).
I don't know the weights of these yet, but they are light for sure.
Last of all, many thanks to Dmitry (a friend and Triton consultant),
Michael (the engineer), and Andrei (the welder) for letting me
materialise my ideas. 🙂
I am expecting the retail price to be quite high, though I have no
control over it. Definitely over £100 though, maybe similar price to
the XTP... but to be honest, for a hand-made titanium frame, it really
isn't too bad a price considering custom titanium bike frames can cost
around £500-£1000!
I'm not expecting or wanting this to be a mass-produced thing, just an
option for the trials enthusiasts out there who want something quality.
This is my contribution to the unicycle community, and I hope you share
my interest and enthusiasm.
Enjoy. 🙂
NB: yes, it does look rather like the Quax alu frame! A pleasant
surprise, when I first saw the frames.
