Thought I would post this as a resource for anyone in Australia looking to get a Titanium unicycle frame made.
Kaos Custom Bikes in Melbourne is offering a 6 week turn around on Ti frames - you supply the design.
To kick the service off the store owner Andrew has a Ti 36’er bike as well as a road bike, nice workmanship on both. I got to check it out the other day and go for a quick spin - first go on a bike in years. The 36’er is so cool
What is especially neat is that unlike a lot of bike shops that have no interest or knowledge re unicycling, unicyclists are regular customers at Kaos due to Andrew’s wheelsmith talents.
Kinda made me think if I ever got back into biking a 36’er would be da bomb!
That’s a very cool bike! I just got a local frame builder to do a Ti 26" for me, it’s back at the shop getting beefier legs. Ti does flex a bit, so take care in what you order since it’s expensive to go back and fix problems.
What’s he planning to do for bearing holders?
That’s the hardest part for sure, and very expensive to machine (time and materials). My bearing holders mimick KH, machined from a 3" piece of solid Ti, he said it took six hours for machining!!
I would love a 36 bike even though I hardly ever ride bikes.
Any ideas of the 36 Uni frame design. The KH is a bit wide at the top in my opinion. The Nimbus is great but flexes a bit. What would be a good comprimise in Ti.
UDC should have some 42mm Ti bearing holders somewhere to suit the ISIS hubs.
It seems that machining the bearing holders from tubing would be much faster, and cheaper than from a solid block. If you could find thick walled tubing with a 50mm outside diamter, and a 40mm inside diameter you could just cut a slice from it, and spin it on a lathe to take a 1mm cut on the inside. That would give you a lip of however thick you want it, and a 42mm channel. Then you would drill it on either side, and cut it in half to create top, and bottom brackets. the bore on the bottom half would be enlarged to allow the outside dimension of the bolts to go through, and the top ones would be tapped to mate with the bolts.
You could do it with thinner walled tubing, and weld on rod stock for the bolts. Either way It shouldn’t be to much work to make bearing holders.
It wouldn’t be in UDCs interests to sell Ti bearing holders, as it would detract from sales of their own Ti frames.
Besides, different parts of the world use different strains of titanium, and I think I read somewhere that welding one kind to another is very complicated and not recommended.
