Re: [RBW] Re: Does anyone still use half step gearing?

[rltilley]

Brompton 6 speeds are basically half-step gearing.  Three speeds on the internal hub with two cogs making 6 gears spaced about 25% apart. I’ve never used a true half-step. Robert Tilley San Diego, CA Sent from my iPhone On Jul 25, 2025, at 7:13 PM, Ted Durant <teddur...@gmail.com> wrote: On Friday, July 25, 2025 at 12:57:43 PM UTC-5 Patrick Moore wrote: Shannon’s post reminded me of the pleasures of half step gearing... Does anyone here use a half-stepped system?  This is a timely post for me. I recently took delivery of a new Chapman "light touring" bike and, as part of the process of deciding what did that bike want to be, I worked hard on a half-step gearing setup. It turns out to be impossible to buy a cassette that works for that, so I cobbled together something from Alibaba and spent some time with it on a test bike.  I'm pretty sure I'm as nerdy about gearing as anyone, and I have the Excel workbook to prove it. I am supportive of the idea of half-step and I wanted it to work. In practice, though, I didn't find it worked well for the riding I mostly do around here.  My take on it is that, if you are limited to 5 or 6 cogs in back, then half-step makes sense for all the usual reasons. Like Shannon, my preference is for a 15% step between gears, just enough to be meaningful, not so much that I have to ride at a cadence that's outside my comfort zone between gears. The Shimano 9-speed 11-32 cassettes are 11-12-14-16-18-21-24-28-32, which is average steps of 14% from the 12 to the 32, with a minuscule 1.4% standard deviation among those steps. The 11-12 jump is pretty much a toss - okay, fine, I can turn it to 11 for that little extra more at 50kph. I also understand the idea of efficiency and not having any duplicate gears, but in practice my 2x9 is an 8-speed transmission with a two-speed transfer case and one extra gear at the top. I'm normally in the big ring, shifting to the small ring when facing a sustained climb of, say, 5% or more. In either ring I've got lovely, consistent 12-15% jumps between each cog. What I really care about in front is that the change between the big and small ring is around 30-35%, big enough to get me to some appreciably smaller gears, but not so big that it's a massive change in RPMs when I shift. A 42/26 combo is a giant 48% change (I use log-differences...), which is way too much for me unless I first shift the rear at least 2 cogs. Minimizing shifts is another form of efficiency, and I'm happy to use the 9 cogs in back to improve that aspect. I've learned not to grind my gears (hah) over duplicate gear combinations. With 11+ cogs in back it opens up another style of gearing, which I have on one of my Sams. The small part of the cassette is 1-tooth jumps, 11-15; the large part is 2+ jumps, 11-15%, average 13%, stdev 1.3%. This creates something of a 4-range gear setup - 1) big gears/small jumps; 2) medium gears/medium jumps;  3) medium gears/small jumps; and 4) low gears/medium jumps. Well, that's the theory. In practice I end up using it as simply high gears/low gears, and I tend to spend most time in the bigger 2/3 of the cassette.  Ted Durant Milwaukee, WI USA -- 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 view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/6577996b-ec92-4ffa-98a2-1c5748ab947en%40googlegroups.com. -- 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 view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/0C774335-082C-4D60-AA1D-4420A1FEB2B0%40gmail.com.