Fatigue Life: Steel Bikes

[A note on process, because this form of expression is a little different for me. It starts with pen and paper. I bullet out the theme and the hooks rattling around in my head, then I read the page back and connect them out loud, dictating the essay into the plain text editor I use for work, which is Sublime Text (shout out to Sublime Text. I've been using you for eighteen years, and I've never paid for you). I move that into Microsoft Word, and then I type more and edit what I spoke. Finally I run it through Grammarly, because I can't spell. I think I have a dusting of dyslexia…undiagnosed, but likely. The photos are mine. Some of the art is MidJourney. I'm calling this "brazed writing": the bullets are the jig that holds the pieces in position, the spoken draft is the parent metal, never melted, and the edits are the filler pulled into the joints. Essentially, I'm converting the ideas in my head into text using modern technology. I've worked in corporate innovation for eleven and a half years. I have advised innovation labs and R&D departments, probably over 200 of them in my career. I'm just taking my own advice with this new method.]

Listen baby…six thousand dollars in. Anyway, it turns out bicycles I love are brazed. I bought the wrong machine, I took the wrong class, and we didn't need to update the electrical. I should have learned how to braze." Plastic was hated by Mailer. I had a 5 thousand dollar garage and the wrong welder. Not in a “let’s all ban plastic” kind of way, but in a moral kind of way, like when somebody lies to you and smiles at the same time. Mailer’s problem with plastic is that it never gets old. Wood turns grey and splits along the grain. Leather cracks and gets darker right where your hand keeps touching it. Steel rusts, gets dents, and develops a patina (which is basically a log book of where it’s been). Plastic doesn’t do any of those things. Plastic comes out looking cheap, and 40 years later it looks cheap, and it hasn’t learned anything. Plastic doesn’t develop a history or a middle ground of aging. Plastic goes directly from new to junk without developing a middle ground that develops a history. I encountered this concept while working on my bike project. My enthusiasm for bicycles, and my lack of knowledge about bicycles were both at odds with each other. For the most part, I spent 5 thousand dollars building a garage around a machine that I couldn’t use. After that, I learned how to MIG weld. After learning how to MIG weld, I became proficient enough to be dangerous, which is the most expensive position a hobby can put you in. Several months after starting this project, I realized that nearly nobody welds a steel bicycle frame. Instead, they braze it. Brazing uses lower heat, a different type of torch, and most importantly, brazing never melts the materials that it’s joining. Brazing wets the joint, and capillary action pulls the filler material into the parent metal, drawing the repair into itself. I purchased the incorrect machine, and learned the incorrect skill for the exact hobby I was interested in pursuing; however, I pursued this hobby with complete conviction. I have no regrets regarding my purchases or skills. I have worked in the digital world for 25 years. Software, strategy, presentations, concepts that last as long as someone is interested in viewing them and disappear as soon as no one views them. In 25 years I have not made a single thing you could pick up. When I learned how to weld, it was the first time in 20 years that I applied heat to an object and created a mark on that object regardless of whether or not I wanted that mark created. Only later did I look for reasons behind what I was doing. The reason, it seems, is that there are three distinct philosophies behind how a thing should live and die based upon the material from which a thing is constructed. In bicycles, those materials are aluminum, carbon fiber, and steel, the core mass-produced frame materials actually available to a person walking into a shop. (There’s titanium, which is so absurdly expensive and beautiful. I’m not gonna reference it in this essay.) Also, some asshole made a bike out of wood. Consider aluminum. I own an aluminum bike. It’s OK. That’s about the best thing I can say about it. Aluminum is lightweight, relatively inexpensive, and it feels cheap, a type of hollow, buzzy stiffness similar to riding a soda can that someone taught to follow a line. And here’s something no one mentions to you when you visit your local bike store: aluminum has a fatigue life. Fatigue life is not poetry. It is engineering. Aluminum does not possess an endurance limit. Therefore, there is no amount of stress that is light enough to cause no damage to aluminum. Every pedal stroke causes some degree of damage to aluminum, no matter how slight, and the debt never dissipates and the metal never recovers, and one day aluminum just breaks without warning, usually on a Tuesday, for no apparent reason related to anything you did. Aluminum is a material that spends its entire existence attempting to appear functional and suddenly stops functioning without warning. I know people who resemble aluminum in their behaviors. Carbon fiber is another option. I own one of these as well, and I will admit that it’s truly remarkable: lightweight similar to a rumor and extremely stiff in the proper areas. Carbon is the miracle material, incredibly strong for such a lightweight material, far beyond what any other material of similar mass should be capable of doing.

However, carbon fiber is strong in the same manner that glass is strong. Carbon fiber is strong, and strong, and strong, and then it becomes a pile of splinters on the ground along with your collarbone misplaced somewhere it shouldn’t be. Carbon fiber does not exhibit bending, denting, or any other visible evidence of wear. There exists only before/after. I find carbon fascinating specifically due to its characteristics. Carbon represents the most contemporary response to what a thing should be: maximum performance, zero elegance, no middle ground. Carbon fiber is plastic that attended a good university. Mailer would have disliked carbon fiber and I believe he would have been at least partially correct. And finally, steel. Steel will bend prior to breaking, providing you with prior notification. And unlike aluminum, steel does possess an endurance limit. Below a certain level of stress, steel will suffer no cumulative damage at all, eternally, which seems like an odd/generous attribute for a material to possess. If you ride steel gently enough, it will retain no records whatsoever. If you ride steel aggressively, it will retain records. However, steel will inform you when something fails, and when something fails, you can generally repair it, since steel can be cut/brazed/added-to/repaired by someone possessing a torch/patience. Yes, steel will rust. However, rust does not represent an endpoint. Rust represents the metal recording information. A steel frame receives a dent, continues to roll, is passed on to your children, gets repainted/refit/outlives the individual who brazed it together. Steel is the sole material of the three materials discussed here that exhibits signs of aging in accordance with Mailer’s expectations for aging materials, openly, visibly, in a manner in which you can interpret/understand those signs. I particularly appreciate Japanese steel, and I have contemplated why. Part of my appreciation stems from Japanese steel’s lug work, the feeling that a specific person possessing a specific standard was present during construction and refused to allow for sloppiness during construction.

This was made in Japan in about 1981. It's lugged and brazed in Japanese steel. I'm always envious of their culture. They have continuous improvement and quality as core cultural values. They're opening Japanese stores in New York and New Jersey, and my kids immediately see the difference in quality. They never stopped caring as a culture. I'll always admire that. However, part of my appreciation also stems from the philosophy integrated into Japanese steel itself. Japanese steel is constructed with maintenance in mind rather than replacement in mind. Japanese steel assumes a long-term relationship between rider/machine. Japanese steel assumes you will return. That is ultimately what this entire process revolves around, and it required a deceased author ranting about Tupperware for me to recognize this fact. The materials themselves are merely ways of asking what type of thing you place trust in. Do you place trust in the type of thing that maintains perfection, teaches you nothing, and eventually betrays you completely? Do you place trust in the type of thing that performs spectacularly until it catastrophically fails? Or do you place trust in the type of thing that displays evidence of aging annually, dents rather than shatters, provides notice prior to failure, can be repaired manually? I know which type of thing I prefer to ride, and I’m beginning to believe it’s also the type of thing I want to be. I haven’t always exhibited characteristics similar to steel. I have been comparable to aluminum exhibiting signs of perfection until cracking occurred, and I have provided a reasonable facsimile of carbon fiber exhibiting signs of maximum performance followed by complete failure on pavement. Steel is the only one of the three types of materials discussed above that believes in repairing damage, that damage does not represent an endpoint, that damage can be repaired by someone caring enough to apply heat via torch and expend time completing repairs.

Therefore, I intend to learn how to construct them (steel bikes by hand). Not because it is efficient, and not because the world requires another male expressing strong opinions regarding tubing, but because I wish to expend some portion of my lifetime constructing objects that age rather than objects that expire without aging, objects that dent but continue to function, objects that can be handed down, objects possessing a fatigue life sufficient to outlast whoever initiated their creation, and possessing sufficient grace to display their age along the way. Mailer disliked plastic due to plastic’s unwillingness to evolve/change into anything else. Conversely, I appreciate steel due to steel’s willingness to evolve/change into something else, typically something superior to what it initially represented, and when steel ultimately fails, it permits you to assist in repairing it.

One of my favorite economists is Thomas Sowell (he should be a household name, but he has the wrong opinions, and he insists on using data, which makes him conveniently easy to ignore). He wrote, “There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.” I teach my kids that. It is one of the smartest things I have ever heard, and I have started to notice it is also a materials lecture.

My steel bike has horrible components. My carbon bike has amazing ones. Wireless shifting, hydraulic disc brakes, the future in every part my hands touch. And every time I swing a leg over the carbon bike, I think of Norman Mailer. He would have hated this shit.

Ride the steel bike. That’s the trade-off.