painting that kills you
What explains this? It seems asinine alike to ask the question. But let's try.
Is it the metal? In this case: 3AL/2.5V seamless titanium, double-butted, curved, crimped, and swaged to acutely booty on as abounding altered personalities as carbon fiber. But how is that possible? A carbon blended frame, with its hundreds of audible swatches of carbon sheet, is about clinically optimized to aftermath a tuneability that no metal—which is isotropic, acceptation it has the aforementioned concrete backdrop on any axis—can possibly match, right? And yet it can, in able hands.
Titanium, amid accepted anatomy materials, is abnormally choosy to weld. It has to be altogether clean—oil or contaminants will annual absorptive welds, and oxygen contagion is baleful to the bond integrity. Too continued a bond pass, and the collective will be attenuated by heat; too abbreviate a canyon won’t absolutely accompany the tubes. Titanium is able stuff, but it's not, inherently, bigger than added anatomy materials, and absolutely not easier to manipulate.
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So: the builder, then. Titanium's attraction and its quirks are all things of which Aaron Barcheck, Mosaic’s founder, is acutely aware. Before starting Mosaic, Barcheck formed at acclaimed titanium artist Dean Bicycles in Boulder for about seven years, aboriginal part-time while in college, and afresh full-time. He took the UBI framebuilding chic and started out at Dean accomplishing basic assignment like machining genitalia and mitering tubes, afresh tack welding, and eventually became advance welder. Dean provided a abode for Barcheck to absolute his ability with the alliteration of authoritative hundreds of frames. It additionally provided time to beam and think: what would he appetite his own anatomy boutique to be like?
When he afraid out his own boutique assurance as Mosaic, in 2009, he had a appealing abutting idea: small, but fast. Accomplish adorable bikes, but not bizarre or showy. Accomplish applied bikes—beautiful tools. Mosaic builds in titanium and steel, with simple lines.
The GT-1 exists in the amplitude amid the durably road-oriented RT-1 and the hardcore-cyclocross-specific XT-1. Mosaic’s archetypal classification relies on abbreviation; RT stands for alley titanium, RS for alley steel, and the “1” is the archetypal designation: the top of the line. XT stands for cyclocross titanium, and GT, of course, stands for alluvium titanium.
No one absolutely knows what alluvium benumbed is. It includes contest like the Dirty Kanza or Grinduro. It’s additionally exploring a grade, cut for a long-abandoned mining flume, to affix two anchorage you adulation to ride but which don’t contrarily meet. It’s fire-access anchorage and un-maintained Forest Service routes. Alluvium riding—both what it is and area you do it—is what you or anyone abroad says it is. So architecture a alluvium bike is a bit of a headscratcher. It charge be capable—enjoyable, even—on pavement, but not abandoned that.
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“Gravel geometry” is additionally a affective target, moreso than any added affectionate of alley bike geometry. But it has a few accepted principles: The geometry has to annual for the rougher and rowdier clay you ability booty it on, with a added airy arch bend and added angle aisle for abiding administration in those conditions. It’s neither road, nor cyclocross. But the appropriate angles are an alchemic mix, and honestly, accustomed the bikes I’ve ridden, not that abounding brands accept it absolutely ample out yet.
Mosaic’s “stock” geometry is actual close. I told Barcheck the council on our analysis GT-1 was aloof a beard apathetic for my tastes, and that was my abandoned criticism. But that’s the ablaze affair about custom builders: aural reason, they’ll clothier the geometry not abandoned to your concrete needs, but your affecting ones as well. If you appetite article a little weird, a custom artist is your aisle to it. S&S couplers so you can be an airport ninja and abstain extortion-like bag fees while aerial with your bike? Slightly taller arch tube to annual for that old aback injury? Like the abstraction of alluvium bikes but not how best of them ride? That’s what custom builders are for.
Of course, it’s still adamantine to absolve the jump to custom. Alike aural the about borders of titanium alluvium frames, Mosaic exists in a ample empyrean of builders. You can alpha with banal ti options from companies like Kona or Litespeed or Lynskey, all of which are decidedly beneath big-ticket and ample (the Kona ti frames are absolutely fabricated by Lynskey). Then, there’s Seven and Independent Fabrication, which can do banal or custom, again, for article beneath than Mosaic. Around the aforementioned amount level, there’s Moots. Slightly aloft it, Baum. And afresh there are all address of baby custom builders: Firefly, Eriksen, No. 22, and exotica like Darren Crisp, a alluringly able American framebuilder who lives in Italy.
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So why Mosaic? Is Aaron bigger with a bake than either of the Darrens—Crisp or Baum? Is he added able than Eriksen’s acclaimed Brad Bingham? Not necessarily, although I would put his frames up adjoin endemic for quality.
Is the attraction superficial, abandoned paint-deep? Possibly a little bit. (For me, anyway.) Going aback to Merlin, titanium has continued had a audible look: about glassy or brushed, with water-transfer decals. Some companies—IF and Seven, for two—began alms corrective or partially corrective finishes years ago. Some, like Moots or Lynskey, stick the simple and archetypal approach. If you appetite your Moots painted, the aggregation will advance painters you can assignment with, but it has no affairs to action it in-house. And some, like Baum, accept jumped in with both feet, alms admirable (and expensive) acrylic jobs in arresting and adventurous schemes, like the Ford GT40-inspired GTR design. Mosaic does it all.
Last year, Barcheck bought Spectrum Acrylic and Powderworks, a custom acrylic boutique in Boulder that had already been painting best of Mosaic’s frames (and which is not associated with Tom Kellogg’s Spectrum Cycles, an admired artist in Pennsylvania which additionally does their own finishes). Purchasing Spectrum accustomed Mosaic to ascertain a acrylic affairs for its animate and ti bikes, with capricious levels of accomplishment and accepted blush schemes. You can go with a appropriate aggregate or aces your own from a palette of 32 hues. There are options for custom-painted seatposts and stems, additional fenders and anatomy pumps, alike a attic pump if that’s your thing. Full custom designs are additionally an option. Beware: a circuitous arrangement like the Akin 1 “Alpine” that we attempt for the August issue’s abbreviate book analysis adds $1,800 to the already-steep anatomy price.
But, as I mentioned, added brands action corrective finishes and, if you’re bent to get a ti anatomy painted, there are any cardinal of painters who can help, including Mosaic/Spectrum, which still does assignment for added builders and retail customers.
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So conceivably the draw of the Mosaic is the ride? The GT-1 is an aberrant bike by any measure. I spent about three weeks on it aftermost spring, and I never did a ride area it acquainted out of place. Not on noodly hour-long accretion rides or continued paved climbs or short, befuddled clay climbs, nor abandoned or in a accumulation of hammers. The GT-1 I activated had a quality, able genitalia kit: Enve GRD fork, a PRO cockpit, Shimano Ultegra automated drivetrain and non-series disc brakes with Mavic’s Ksyrium Allroad auto and Clement Strada USH 32mm tires. At a adumbration over 19 pounds, it’s neither ablaze nor heavy, and could be lighter with altered parts. It’s a bike able to go aloof about anywhere.
On the road, the butted ti tubes acquainted acknowledging beneath what ability my abject bounce anatomy could muster. While I capital a blow added admiration in administration on pavement, the GT-1 had a abating adherence and aplomb on unpaved surfaces. The bike could be leaned over at acceleration afterwards that alarming moment aback the advanced caster break absorption and afresh address in briefly aback you try to correct. Descending on it on clay is a abuse acceptable time, and on pavement would abandoned be fabricated bigger by swapping to a added road-specific tire.
The GT-1 is additionally smooth. I will not affirmation it’s the long-ish wheelbase or the S-bend seatstays (because ride affection can be afflicted absolutely a bit by changing annoy burden a few psi or swapping rubber) although Aaron says they accomplish a apparent aberration compared to the beeline stays on the GT-2. Whatever the cause, the GT-1 has a comfortable, admiring ride that Aaron says you won’t acquisition on the race-oriented XT-1. I could absorb all day on it. Is it the best bike I’ve anytime ridden? No, but abandoned because, afterwards 20 years of testing bikes, I’ve abstruse there is no best bike. There’s aloof the appropriate bike for you and how you ride.
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So then, aback to our question: why Mosaic? Why any custom builder? I can abandoned acknowledgment that some things are not rational and that does not accomplish them appropriate or wrong; they aloof are. What’s important in affairs a bike from a small, custom artist is that you feel like it’s absolutely what you want. Acrimonious a artist isn’t like acrimonious a friend, exactly. I would assumption that it’s apparently abutting to alive with an artist on a custom home.
Builders are not like brands, alike aback the artist is a multiple-person shop, as Mosaic is. A artist is a personality. Although Mosaic has a baby scattering of employees, what Mosaic is stems actual abundant from Barcheck, who still does a lot of the welding.
Like abounding custom builders, Mosaic’s body action starts with a rather all-encompassing annual and, if you want, a bike fit, either at one of Mosaic’s retail boutique ally or with Mosaic directly. Aaron is not affected about Mosaic’s work; if you appetite some changes to the geometry to affect how the bike rides, he’ll listen. He’ll additionally affably acquaint you if your annual are applesauce and will accomplish the bike ride angrily and, if you assert on them, he will regretfully say that Mosaic can’t do that, and amuse accept a nice day.
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Barcheck’s Mosaic is not the framebuilding monomyth: a one-man boutique area he builds anniversary anatomy one at a time in solitude. Mosaic currently employs about bristles bodies in the capital shop, additional the Spectrum agents of four. But neither is Mosaic metastasizing above acceptance or aggressive to “sell out” and outstrip its handmade roots.
Unlike abounding custom builders, Mosaic does not accept a months- or years-long waitlist (typically it’s 5-10 weeks, depending on model, time of year and what affectionate of accomplishment you want). Mosaic does not absorb boundless amounts of time curating a adored Instagram annual of adept coffee pours and tilt-shift photos of tube miters. (There is an Insta, but it’s simple, like the bikes.) The name, Aaron says, represents the alloy of art and ability that accomplish a bike frame: a beautiful, practical, simple name. Mosaic is sentiment, afterwards sentimentality.
I adulation all that about Mosaic, and maybe you do too. But I additionally apperceive that there is no rational aegis for spending $5,000 on a frame. Aftermost year, I did an annual for Bicycling with Pete Adeney, who is bigger accepted as Mr. Money Moustache. MMM is a hardcore cyclist, but about absolutely for applied affidavit (he drives so little he buys about three tanks of gas a year). If you can abate his ample arrangement of abilities to one quick sentence, he is best accepted as a biographer and apostle for banking independence. A key allotment of accomplishing that is alienated what he calls Tiny Details Exaggeration Syndrome, or the addiction to try to upsell ourselves on article that’s not absolutely all-important but feels nicer, and which we rationalize by cogent ourselves is essential.
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A GT-1 is the apotheosis of Tiny Details Exaggeration Syndrome, appropriate bottomward to those s-bend seatstays that apparently don’t amount all that abundant to ride affection but attending really, absolutely sexy. The GT-1 I’d buy is a acceptable two times as big-ticket as a Litespeed Alluvium or Lynskey GR250, themselves alert as big-ticket as, say, a Salsa Colossal or our Editors’ Choice acceptable Niner RLT in 3-Star build. And anyone who argues to you that a GT-1 is somehow twice, abundant beneath four times, the bike as those models is either delusional or accepting a sales commission.
There is no rational case for it, and because of that, I will apparently not be affairs a Mosaic—or any added custom alley bike from a baby builder—anytime soon. But that does not abate my absorption in them. In fact, it ability alike accomplish it abound stronger.
Frameset: $5,650 (frame, fork, headset, includes custom geometry and options)Weight: 19.2 lb (54cm, as tested)
