You may know who Joshua Ogle is. He’s a pretty well known guy from the US bike making scene as he’s been making things for a very long time. One of the reference personalities for sure. Jericho Bikes (long since gone) is what he may be best known for when he was building frames in Berkeley. In more recent years he’s been making watches. Right!?! Watches. (boom!) The whole watch, mechanism and all. Pretty amazing work by any measure. Check his grams, bro.
He’s been diddling with bike part machining most recently, making some proprietary frame parts for Firefly Bicycles. Work on this level is only available for a single handful of brands out there. It’s all so completely legit.
With a chunk of scrap he had laying around, he cut up some jockey pulleys for the GX-12 derailleur. Titanium narrow wide pulleys. FRESH! As a designer, I loved what I saw. There is a simplicity and elegance to them. I loved that the spokes become the wide tooth. I told him so. It turns out, he owed me a favor and this just came together. Today, I received a 14/14 pulley set and tossed it on the bike.
We had some discussion about the possible benefits and risks of running 14/14 instead of 12/14 as would be OEM safe. Who dares wins, so he cut me the 14’s.
I just had to have some 688 bearings to drop in and some end caps that were provided by Kogel Bearings. This consists of three 5mm caps and one 6mm cap that locates on the pulley arm.
I can’t wait to test these out and see what they can offer!