The novelist E.L Doctorow gave a lecture that I attended 25 years ago. His novel "Billy Bathgate" had just been made into a movie. He was amused by the movie making term about budget "bringing it in". The movie was "brought in" at $65million, or something like that. He said he was able to "bring in" the novel at around $27.75. I've used that term ever since for builds with a objective weight target, or a qualitative weight objective. I recently brought in a Legolas build at 19 pounds, a Leo at 22 pounds. I imagine somebody could bring in a Cheviot at 24 pounds or so. I estimate that would be about a $5000 Cheviot and would not have fenders, racks, bags, or a kickstand.
The fact is: the weight of your bike matters only as much as you say it matters. If you say it doesn't matter, then it doesn't. If you say it does matter, then it does. Do you have an objective target? Teh straightforward approach is to make a comprehensive build list and weigh everything. Your bike will weigh the sum of all its parts. Weigh them all and add it up. If it's not the total you want, take things away and replace parts with lighter ones on your list until you get to where you need to be. Bill Lindsay El Cerrito, CA On Thursday, August 16, 2018 at 11:56:35 AM UTC-7, Kiley Demond wrote: > > Now that my Riv is Gabriel's Riv, and seeing it stripped down to its > original glory, I think about what wasn't perfect and what I would like to > do for my next bike, a time-honored technique for dealing with loss; in > this case, the loss of a bike. > > I love steel frames. I can't imagine not having a steel bike, but since I > am 5'10" (the 91 PBH is the real issue), the frame is large, and even > though I am strong, I am still a 60-year old woman. My pimped Cheviot was* > heavy.* Getting it up the three steps to my front porch wasn't easy. > Given that, what could be done to make one of these bikes lighter? I took > Grant's "let's not quibble about weight" philosophy to heart, so when I > added some essential accessories, they were all shiny steel. Like stacking > tolerances, it all added up. I didn't know much about components when I > first got the bike, but I learned from understanding and replacing what I > didn't like (and I did end up with the Bosco aluminum bars because they > were the "right" size). I could *read* about it, but I really needed to *feel > *about it. (Speaking of which, I always thought that a Build-a-Bike > program would be a great idea. It is a cross between Build-a-Bear and Book > Club; you buy the frame and then learn how to build up a bike, and you can > swap out components until you find the ones that work for you. The first > class is the theoretical parts discussion over a beer or coffee depending > on the time of day, where you pick your frame, and subsequent meetings are > building and testing riding.) > > *Anyhow*, thoughts on reducing weight on a bike? I figure this needs to > be considered at the component level up (or is that down?), if the frame is > a given. > > (My next bike will be another mixte or step-thru, which unless something > changes in the next two years, will be a Cheviot or L-Clem. I also want it > to be e-Bike "compatible". I cannot buy an off-the-rack eBike because no > one makes a mixte or step-thru large enough, and I still want the bike to > be a pleasure to ride!) > > Kiley > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
