Last issue, steel bikes took a hammering. This issue, deputy editor James Spender leaps to their defence
I ‘love a good steel bike as much as the next tedious man in his thirties,’ wrote web editor Matthew Loveridge on this very page last month. ‘But I don’t think steel deserves the near mythical status it now enjoys… that’s inextricably linked to our collective fetish for all things retro… to our notions or artisanal integrity.’
Why, I nearly spat my naturally processed cold brew all over the Ercol coffee table. Me, tedious? Because I am 39 and I do love steel.
Let me count the ways
Bartali rode steel, Coppi rode steel, so did De Vlaeminck, Burton, Canins, Roche and Pantani. Anquetil, Merckx, Hinault and Indurain all won five Tours on steel bikes (despite what many people say, Indurain did ride a steel Banesto at the 1995 Tour; Fausto Pinarello showed me the bike). Steel is mythical in the way the Aston Martin DB5 is mythical, not because it is the best-performing car but because it starred in the greatest moments. So knowing this, when I look at a steel bike my collective fetish kicks in as I discuss the artisanal integrity of the brazing and the way the 97-year-old framebuilder came to steel bikes through making armaments in the Second World War. I start to weep as I say this, gazing at the steel bike in question; my heart literally aneurysms at the sight of the seat lug.
I once interviewed Austrian architect and prolific bicycle collector Michael Embacher and asked him why he chose to buy the bikes he did. ‘Because they have atmosphere,’ he replied. Bikes, for non-racers at least, are emotional objects first and foremost, and steel bikes are emotional objects for me.
However, this isn’t a sound scientific argument, and I appreciate Matthew’s point that steel is an inferior material, mechanically speaking, to carbon.
Take Columbus Omnicrom, the steel alloy used in Columbus’s top-end tubesets, and compare it with Toray T800H, a carbon fibre commonly used in composite frames. The ultimate tensile strength of Omnicrom is 1,300MPa while the UTS of Toray T800H is 5,490MPa. Then density: steel is around 8g/cm3 while carbon is more like 1.5g/cm3. So carbon is four times stronger than steel while being five times less dense.
This fact propelled designers towards ever-greater stiffness values – the bottom bracket stiffness of the Cervélo R5 is a claimed 221N/mm, a steel Cinelli Vigorelli is 117N/mm (source: bike-x.de). However, this isn’t because steel isn’t strong or stiff enough as a material – after all, they build bridges out of it – it’s just that in
