BOOM! USELESS DRIZZLE
How hard is it to make a bike or bike BIZ. and use metals mined and processed into steel here in the USA. How hard is it to find skilled works to make such bikes??
Well first off the in the 21st century the United States only produces a very small amount of RAW iron ORE.. The biggest producers are first China and then Australia. Most of the steel in the USA is now imported or made from recycled steel.
In the picture above you can see it's quite the job to work in a foundry. This is a pour taking place in Japan. It's just like buying avocados from Brazil. It's much easier to pay someone else to farm them than to support the local farmers. In the Bike manufacturing world if you invest locally the business you support grow and become juicier and of course so much closer. Fresh ripe steel yeah. !!
So if I wanted to make a bicycle and get best THE bang for buck but also be able to heat treat my frame, and of course use steel lugs what would I use.... well 4130 cromoly of course. 4130 is AN alloy and very popular back in the mid 80's for racing BMX bikes. Allot of those bikes has buffed surface finishes which showed off the reflective head treated coloring of the material.
Ok so cromoly 4130 is an alloy. What does the 4130 mean? Well it's really just coding from the ... American Iron and Steel Institute. So:
4 = molybdenum major alloy
1 = chromium alloy, 0.95%
30 = 0.3% molybdenum in the alloy
Allot of people have A disconnected view when it comes it how products are made. Cell phones in the hands of Green Peace activists are a prime example. Vegans won't even wear leather, yet all the anti mining activists are not going give up use of metals any time soon. I point this out not because I like to club cute baby animals but because it's time we as a people Begin to honor our supply chain. This respect goes all the way down to line to the miners and steel workers producing our "green" and clean bicycles and even our armed forces keeping the trucks juiced up and on the road. (for the time being).
Steel can be made and found in the United States. The question is do I want to pay for it when I can buy Chinese steel for allot cheaper. Well thinking ahead It always makes sense to support our local economy unless we want it to vaporize. 4130 cold drawn steel can be found here in the USA and it's some top notch STUFF.
Cross section of cold drawn steel machine from way long ago.
Side view
Cold drawn HEX tubes
Cars ( as an example) are not really manufactured by Humans any more. Yes it takes a Human to piece all the end items together but for the most part the art of manufacturing / job has long since dwindled away. Riding in a hand made bike gives us a stronger connection to our creator. Having a list of names of the people that helped make that product along it's supply chain gives us a little bit more real pride to hold on too.
TO cut to chase buying Italian steel or Japanese tubing may have some really slick properties that are not available in the United States when buying a tube set for a conventional "DIAMOND" shaped frame. Well let's look beyond that and say I was starting a bike BIZ maybe large well organized coop. Well no matter what I am going to want use USA iron and a USA steel plant to make my product. Made buy Americans in American. Ok so what are my options???
Well for right now let promote Plymouth Steel.
Check out there videos on 4130. It's a start in the right direction.
http://www.plymouth.com/products/carbon-and-alloy-tubing/carbon-dom-steel-tubing/
And of course we need some bending so lets see how that ProMoly bends up. BENT
The answer is it's takes allot of people along the way to make a bike. Will you be one toooo.
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