I’m wondering how much sense all of this is going to make for folks out there.
I wanted to talk a bit about handlebars as they’ve taken over during the last week. New tooling and math. A new bike in production. It’s always wild in these moments.
There isn’t a lot of discussion out there about handlebars. Not too many people have an understanding of how they work on the bike. I keep hoping to make changes in that but continue to fail over the last 7 or 8 years. I keep trying.
New handlebar calculator helps describe the bar geometry and ensure that my cuts are perfect. The math informs the master part file and vice versa. This table reflects several rounds of back and forth in development.
The new tooling is exciting. Just to take it from what I’d used a few years ago to now is wild. It just keeps getting better. More precise. Easier to use. More economical. Again, any investment in fixture table type tooling just magnifies all of the setups and values. Legos.
Reviewing tooling has gotten so interesting. Having a well sorted system for solving problems improves everything. I can build value into a tool just in speculating as doing that is so easy.
The 18 degree sweep of the new bars is the gamble. I keep saying that. I’m clearly worried. Worried is good. That means I’m gambling. I’m not safe. Things may go wrong. They may also go right. This is what real development will feel like. We don’t know. But we used to not know lots of things. This will be another one of those things that we used to not know. Remember this feeling.
