A Furry FAQ

I've written up a "Frequently Asked Questions" text file and posted it to the google group http://groups.google.com/group/furrybluecycles?hl=en

I'm duplicating a portion of the FAQ in this blog posting:


Who is Furry Blue Cycles?
Furry Blue Cycles is Sharon and Michael Gordon.

? What's Your Mission?
Our mission is to bring to market hand-made steel bicycles that are not commonly available, and that reflect our taste and the kind of bicycle riding we do. We live in bicycling paradise in the San Francisco Bay Area and go for recreational road rides around Stanford University.

? Where does the name come from?
Our son is an aspiring puppeteer, and in brainstorming ideas for the little company we suggested "puppet cycles" since the bicycle is an inanimate object controlled by the rider. Our son didn't like that name and instead suggested his favorite blue furry puppet.

? What kind of bicycles do you make?
Short answer: our bikes are closer to a road bike than a mountain bike, but are in-between in the following ways: they may use smaller wheels than the 700C wheels of a road bike, they are intended for medium width tires (say 1 1/4" to 1 1/2"), and they may be designed for flat or swept back handlebars and a less bent-over position.

? Isn't that a long winded way of saying Furry Blue makes hybrid bicycles?
The typical hybrid bicycle these days has a stiff aluminum frame, a heavy gauge steel fork, and comes with stiff/heavy 700C medium width tires, has a somewhat "slow" steering, and is built higher off the ground to avoid pedal strikes on uneven surfaces. The Furry Blue bicycle is more of a road bike in the frame design - it has a light gauge steel frame, lighter road fork, is built lower to the ground for stability, and has a quicker, more responsive feel to the steering. It is not necessary to have a wider tire be thick and heavy, and a Furry Blue bicycle is intended for supple, medium width tires that complement its lightweight construction and frame geometry.

Riding the Orange Bike

(Note: click on the picture of the bike to enlarge.)

I've had a few rides now on the orange bike, it's a lot of fun. I'm still fiddling around with the setup, and for now I've left the fork uncut because once it's cut, you can't go back.

The main thing bothering me at this point is that I am getting a bit of ghost shifting, probably due to using friction shifters with an 8 speed cassette.

The orange bike uses "650B" wheels which are somewhat smaller than a road bike (700C), yet about an inch larger (at the rim) in diameter than a mountain bike. As I explain below, I wanted slightly smaller wheels than the standard 700C, and it was a bit of a toss up for me to go with 650B versus mountain bike wheels. I think if I had a shorter torso, or liked wider tires (say 1.5" or even 1.75" in width), I might have picked the mountain bike wheel size. But I wanted to use narrower 1 1/4" width tires, and from what I've read narrower tires work better with slightly larger diameter wheels since they have a longer "contact patch" with the ground. Basically that says that 650B is a nice in-between size.

The 650B size was quite rare in the USA, although some similar sizes were common on the old "3 speeds" by Raleigh (650A), and yet another slightly different size was used on the 3 speed Schwinns of my youth. The 650B revival in the USA owes much to the efforts of Rivendell Bicycle Works to make rims and tires readily available, and they were the first to introduce non-custom bikes with the 650B wheelsize. The Riv 650B models (Saluki, Bleriot) are intended as "country bikes" that move easily from smooth roads to gravel or dirt.

I'm aware of two other small companies that have embraced the 650B wheelsize for production bikes: Kogswell and Rawland. While these production 650B models have their differences, they all have longer chainstays and different steering than a typical road bike. And while I only had a brief ride on a Rivendell Bleriot, my experience with 700C bikes leads me to generalize that a longer wheelbase and slower steering makes a bike feel more sedate, if not actually slower.

For the kind of riding I do (mostly smooth roads), 700C wheels with say 28 mm width tires work well. But for slightly wider tires and/or fenders, and if I want good clearance to avoid hitting the front wheel with my foot, then a smaller size wheel makes sense.

So I wanted to create a 650B bike that would use the relatively narrow Grand Bois tires and feel quick and agile like a sporty road bicycle. I'm going to continue test riding, but so far I think the orange bike has met its design goals. As I've noted, the idea of a "go-fast" 650B bike isn't an original idea, but to my knowledge no one has attempted to "standardize" the concept and make such a bike more widely available.

I plan to mount the fenders soon and get more pictures up in a few weeks.

Dividing the Spectrum - What's a Sportif?

I'll be posting more about the "orange bike," but I want to first digress and talk about the spectrum of bicycles.

Today there are endless categories of bicycles: road bikes, mountain bikes, comfort bikes, touring bikes, fitness bikes, hybrid bikes, etc. A Road Bike typically has 622 mm (diameter) wheels (called 700C) with roughly 1 inch (23-25mm) width tires and drop handlebars, and mountain bikes typically have some sort of suspension, smaller 559 mm (diameter) wheels (called 26 inch) with roughly 2 inch (50mm) width tires and "flat" handlebars.

Builder Curt Goodrich has a new website, it's interesting to see his categories, particularly the "sportif": http://www.curtgoodrich.com/bikes/sportif/

The "orange bike" has several inspirations, including the Bridgestone XO series, and particularly the Tournesol Sportif built for Douglas Brooks.

Killer Ben

Ben is now almost 10 months old, see his antics on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddTkbcVGM3w

It's an Orange Furry Blue

Here's the bike back from the powdercoater, it's not assembled I just put on some pieces to visualize, hopefully next week it'll be ready for a test ride.

Happy Holidays and a good New Year to everyone!

atomic orange

It's been a long time since my last post, but slowly things have been going on.

The next Furry Blue frame has been built and it's now being powder coated. I'll talk more about the frame in another post, here I'll mostly talk color. I've been somewhat obsessed with copper/orangish type colors for some time, and this past summer there was a Corvette show in downtown Los Altos. I saw a beautiful Corvette that was "atomic orange"and decided I wanted that color, or something close to it, for my next bike - see picture.

It took some effort to find a powder coat color that is close - I got samples for a bunch of standard RAL colors from Tiger and nothing was a match. So I bought touch up paint from a Chevy dealer, applied the paint to some paper and sent it off to Prismatic. The best match was a two step process consisting of a basecoat and a tinted overcoat. I think it'll look good, we'll see.

Meanwhile, here's the raw frame - surprise, it's not a mixte, it's a versatile road bike designed for the Grand Bois 650B X 32 tires and I'll be trying out the Mary On-One handlebars too:

Mixte versus hybrid step through

My wife has a Bianchi hybrid in a step through ("ladies") style frame. This past Sunday she finally had a chance to try the Furry Blue mixte.

I was curious to see what her reaction would be. She enjoys riding her bike, but she's not really "in" to bikes. Well, this past Sunday she went for her first ride, and she was all smiles.

She liked the Furry Blue mixte better than her Bianchi hybrid step through, no question. Even though the hybrid is made from a lighter aluminum frame, and the parts on the Furry Blue aren't especially light, she said the Furry Blue felt sportier - lighter and quicker. She also noticed that the Furry Blue felt lower to the ground, and she felt less "on top of the bike" and that it felt safer and more stable and she liked that feeling.

Her reaction is what I hoped for. The Furry Blue mixte is somewhat like a hybrid bike in the use of canti or v-brakes and ability to take wider tires. However it differs from most hybrids since it has a steeper head tube angle which means quicker steering and shorter distance from the cranks to the front wheel. Also, as she easily noticed, the bike as a whole is built lower to the ground because the place where the cranks attach to the frame is set lower.