Unicycle.com NZ recently received the first of the new KH24 unicycle frames. They are made of aluminium rather than steel, so they’re a lot lighter than the old frame. There are several other design changes including rounded in fork crown and a little hollow ‘noodle’ for grip when doing one-footed tricks. The finish is a very tasteful shade of blue. These new model KH munis are going to rock! The frames and complete KH24s are not yet for sale. Patience, grasshopper.
We also got a few new Onza/Kris Holm hubs. They look somewhat similar to the original Onza hubs. I don’t have any other details about these hubs at this stage. Maybe Kris can fill us in on this…?
Again these aren’t for sale yet.
Ohh, exciting! Thanks for sharing. I love the colour of the frames and the look of the hub. Good thing those frames are aluminium…otherwise they’d be rather heavy. Good to see the bosses come standard too.
Those frames look very cool, I like the rounded crown. But those noodle things just look silly. I’m sure they give you loads of grip for one footed stuff but they look daft and out of place, kind of like an afterbirth. Sorry I meant afterthought. I don’t think they are necessary.
What a neat looking frame, I really like it. Although I (as a non glider/coaster) find the noodles bizarre looking, I’m sure they are there for a reason.
Lets just hope that this hub will have cranks that aren’t on the far ends of the crank length spectrum…making people choose the crank length they hate less
(because I would assume that these splines are minutely different than the profiles, making them un-interchangable)
I got a prototype aluminum trials 20 incher from Kris that has the noodles and while they look “daft,” they work great for 1 foot stuff and WWing, gliding, et al. Possibly overkill. You can mill them off in a second, in any event, and lay in a strip of grip cloth like you find on the top of skateboards. Eyal did that and it works like a charm.
Thanks for the pictures, that frame looks awesome. Like another step forward in unicycle design. Here is a mass-produced, complex fork designed especially for unicycles, built upon a previous fork designed especially for unicycles. We are coming int our own!
Those noodles look like cable guides. This probably eases the production process, if the frames are to be built in a bicycle factory. Standard stuff, so cheap to add on. And clearly they will grip your feet, though they will probably scuff up and lose all their color pretty fast.
Is that an anodized finish? I love the look of anodized. I hope there are plans for red ones eventually…
What about using one or two set screws on the crown for foot grip instead of the noodle? Set screws should offer enough grip. They come in a variety of lengths to customize the grip for each person’s taste. And if you don’t want any grippy bits the set screws can be removed.
Here’s what Kris said in an email:
“Re the circular bits: Since the fork crown is flat but slightly narrower than the last model, it helped a lot for gliding and standup tricks to have a pretty agressive grip on top of the fork crown. You will find that it helps a lot with control.”
Looks great! Almost makes me want to go out and drop my current project and just buy one of those.
It looks like they had to have signifigant reinforcing to the crown. I imagin the flat plate betwen the legs has much more than an asthetic purpose…
I think I can speak for multiple people when I say that the issue isn’t the workability of the metal but the tools to work it. I doubt many people have a milling machine sitting around where they can do that cut. Of course a wet grinder (or a dry grinder if you are careful) and some patience can also deal with those bits in good time.
Hacksaw, file?! What ever do you speak of? I can’t imagine any tool that doesn’t involve a motor! Seriously, I completely for got those. Funny, I overlooked the simplest solution for another complicated one that was also more expensive. I could never be a physicist…
why is everyone so concerned about the cosmetics of the unicycle? if you really cared about how you looked, you’d prolly still be riding one of those two wheeled mechanisms! there is a new beautiful frame in front of us and all we can talk about is the tiny new noodles
The frame looks good, the node things do look like a last min fix to me though instead of something designed with the frame. But hell whatever works right? Eventually I think that what was done on the Alpha Uni prototypes and like John Childs suggested putting a few pins in the crown is an ideal solution for grip. That or just some Grip Tape.
The Hub looks kinda funky with the 2 brand names side by side can we combine then to Onzholm or perhaps Holnmza.
