anyone know of someone who can build a giraffe unicycle with ultra light materials like say, titanium. I’m in the market for a custom job.
Mickey O’Connor www.visualcomic.com
I currently don’t know of anyone that would do it although someone shouldn’t be too hard to find, but what is the reason that you would need an ultra light giraffe?
yeah teh carbon giraffe is wot u need. U coudl even make it lighter by putting a 36 spoke wheelset on it.
Great web site Mickey! Very Mac-friendly, which means it works fine on PCs as well. The “Words” page could use a little copy editing though.
Why a titanium giraffe? If you’re a performer on the road, I’d imagine you would want something indestructable, and/or easy to fix if something did go wrong. In my experience a little weight is good insurance against breakage on the road. My Schwinn Giraffe, at 17 pounds, has never let me down and I’ve taken it all over the world.
But then again, the rules of flying have changed since the 80s/90s when I was doing most of that. Now it’s all about weight, and maybe that’s your issue. The best thing already made out there is Roger Davies’ carbon giraffe. I have one of his carbon mountain unicycles. There was a problem with that frame once, so I stuck it in an envelope, mailed it to him (it weighed less than a pound) and he sent it back better than new. And he knows his unicycles.
If you’re set on titanium, I think your best bet is to find a custom bike frame builder who works with titanium. You could get the rest of the parts from a “regular” giraffe, so your framebuilder could use that as a guide. I’ve seen some titanium regular unicycle frames, but never a giraffe. For more information send me an email (address below).
My recommendation for an easier solution is to scan eBay from time to time for Schwinn Giraffes. Make sure you get a later model. The difference is a bolted-on vs. threaded-on bottom sprocket. The earlier, threaded ones can unscrew on you, which can make for a sudden dismount without warning. You want the ones with three hex-head, slotted bolts in the bottom sprocket.
just to cause some trouble… ever since mac went X86… isnt a mac a PC?
since the definition of a PC is the X86 architecture and not the windows software… IE i am running linux but am still a PC user…
well, you ask a difficult question. Part of me wants to say, yeah i guess so. But the other part of me is saying, hell no!.. I think i am going to go with the yeah i guess so part, but it is no where near the same as a pc. The reason a pc is a pc is that you can upgrade it. How do you upgrade a mac? You throw it out and buy a new mac.
This is a thread about lightweight giraffes. Are you lost?
Anyway, to continue the threadjack, my take is that there are multiple uses to the term PC. I read PC Magazine every month. Generally they are aiming at Windows PCs. There is very little coverage of other OSes running on X86 hardware, though they do mention Linux and Mac products, and review Apple computers along with the usual PCs.
PC also means Personal Computer. That’s a much wider meaning, and includes all Macs intended for personal use. From that view, Macs have always been PCs. That’s why the people at my wife’s company, which runs Macs on a Mac network, used to refer to non-Macs as IBMs (or IBM-compatible machines). The IBM definition is pretty outdated as well at this point.
But yeah, in general, Macs are PCs. They are only not PCs if you are including Windows in the definition. The chip architecture is the least-specific thing to go by these days…
can i just threadjack some more in saying that PC originally used to mean “professional computer” the term kinda got mixed up since everyone seems to have gone X86… i used to respect mac for being powerpc now they are a posh system integrator respect lost. Or are they music salsesmen?
all respect goes to Sun instead who keep X86 and SPARC and have an awesome opensource OS.
also respect to ibm for doing awesome cpus and being the cleverest out of m$, Nitendo and Sony 
/end of threadjack
are titnaium unicycles good? has anyone got one? and has anyone like DM/ hunter every made one?
I heard somewhere someone is making theirs out of magnesium or something like that. Is this true???
does weight make much of a difference on a giraffe?
Maybe to a certain extent… If you mean bunny hops and stuff like that. It may have the tendency to bend or snap. Is this what you mean uni_jim???
i know Moots out of steamboat springs colorado does custom Ti work. Pricey though.
Less weight would mean easier to hop up objects and be more responsive, making stoping, accelerating, and turning can all be done a bit faster and sharper.
I’m sure if Mickeyo had a giraffe that was a couple of pounds lighter his performances would be a bit more impressive.
Ti would be flexy, and not something you want on a giraffe 5 feet off the ground.