Skip to content
Torsion

Titanium frames · Adelaide

Ride your own numbers.

Road, gravel and touring frames in titanium, drawn to your measurements and welded by hand in Adelaide. Grab the saddle. Pull the handlebar. Watch the frame move.

Draw my frame Book a fitting

Side view of a gravel frame drawn for a rider 178 cm tall with an 84 cm inseam.

Stack
585mm
Reach
387mm
Seat angle
73.0°
Head angle
71.0°
Wheelbase
1036mm
Trail
70mm
Chainstay
425mm
Saddle height
742mm

Draw it.

Put in your height and inseam, pick where you ride, and the frame redraws itself around you. Every number moves, and every number is shown.

The drawing moves when JavaScript is on. Below are the three medium frames, road, gravel and touring, with their numbers.

A starting point for a fitting, not a prescription. Your fitting decides.

How we got these
  1. Saddle height is 0.883 × your inseam, from the centre of the crank to the top of the saddle. It's an old rule of thumb, and it's where we start.
  2. Stack grows with your legs: 238 mm + 3.75 × your inseam in cm, then road +12, gravel +32, touring +58.
  3. Reach grows with the rest of you: 190 mm + 2.1 × (height − inseam) in cm, then road +6, gravel 0, touring −10, held between 340 and 425.
  4. Seat angle: road 73.5°, gravel 73.0°, touring 72.5°. It is a little steeper for shorter legs and a little slacker for longer ones, never more than 0.75° either way.
  5. Head angle: road 73.0°, gravel 71.0°, touring 71.5°. Fork rake 45, 50 and 48 mm.
  6. Trail = (wheel radius × cos head angle − rake) ÷ sin head angle, with wheels of 340, 356 and 351 mm radius, tyre included.
  7. Chainstays 408, 425 and 450 mm. Wheelbase is the front centre plus the rear centre.
  8. The guard. If your toe could reach the front tyre, the head angle slackens (as far as 72.0°, 70.0° or 70.5°) and the rake grows (up to 50, 55 or 55 mm). If the head tube would be shorter than we'd build, the stack comes up. A post always shows above the frame. Nothing on this page draws a frame that can't be built.

Rules of thumb, and a start. Your fitting decides.

A rider in long sleeves and a helmet climbs a winding sealed road between gum trees on a bare titanium road bike.

Made to measure, not to a size.

Stock frames come in sizes. You don't. We start from the rider: how long your legs are, how far you reach, what roads you ride and how long you stay out. Those numbers become a drawing, the drawing becomes a jig, and the jig holds the tubes while we weld.

A few millimetres of stack changes how a bike feels in the third hour. So we don't guess them. We measure, we draw, and we show you every number before a tube is cut.

Draw your starting point

The three frames, for a rider 178 cm tall

Three kinds of frame, one set of rules.

Road

Road, for a rider 178 cm tall with an 84 cm inseam, from the model
Stack565 mm
Reach393 mm
Seat angle73.5°
Head angle73.0°
Chainstay408 mm
Wheelbase994 mm
Trail57 mm
Saddle height742 mm

Shorter and steeper. It turns when you think about turning, and it's happy on a long climb. Room for the tyres a sealed road needs, and not much more.

Draw a road frame

Gravel

Gravel, for a rider 178 cm tall with an 84 cm inseam, from the model
Stack585 mm
Reach387 mm
Seat angle73.0°
Head angle71.0°
Chainstay425 mm
Wheelbase1036 mm
Trail70 mm
Saddle height742 mm

Longer and slacker. Calm when the ground goes loose, with room for wider tyres and a bit of mud. Bosses for bottles and a frame bag.

Draw a gravel frame

Touring

Touring, for a rider 178 cm tall with an 84 cm inseam, from the model
Stack611 mm
Reach377 mm
Seat angle72.5°
Head angle71.5°
Chainstay450 mm
Wheelbase1053 mm
Trail67 mm
Saddle height742 mm

Taller at the front and longer at the back, so your heels clear the bags. Bosses for racks front and rear, and for mudguards.

Draw a touring frame

Gloved hands tighten a clamp on a bare titanium frame held in a steel jig, lit by a high workshop window.

Nothing is cut until you sign the drawing.

  1. 1Talk it through. Where you ride, what you ride now, and what you'd change about it.
  2. 2Get fitted. In the workshop, with the numbers from this page as the start, not the answer.
  3. 3Sign the drawing. You get the full drawing to question and mark up. Nothing is cut until you sign it.
  4. 4Mitre and weld. Each tube is cut and mitred to the drawing, set in the jig and welded by hand.
  5. 5Ride it with us. The first ride starts at the workshop, so the saddle and the handlebar can move a few millimetres.

The drawing becomes the jig. The jig holds the tubes at the angles you signed, and the frame is tacked, checked and welded a short run at a time, turning it so the heat never sits in one place for long.

How long does it take? We'll tell you our timing once we've seen your drawing.

A gloved hand guides a TIG torch along a titanium joint. The finished bead behind the arc is silver and pale straw.

How titanium is welded.

Titanium welds beautifully and forgives nothing. Hot, it takes in oxygen from the air and turns brittle, so every joint is welded inside a shield of argon: over the bead from the torch, behind it from a trailing cup, and inside the tube from a purge that fills it before the arc strikes.

The colour tells you how it went. A clean weld comes out silver, or the pale straw of a paddock in December. Blue or grey means air got in, and that joint is cut out and done again. It's the only colour on a raw frame, and we don't hide it under paint.

  • Silver good
  • Pale straw good
  • Blue cut out, done again
  • Grey cut out, done again
  • Brushed: a fine grain that runs along each tube.
  • Bead-blasted: an even satin grey that shrugs off a scuff.
  • Violet anodised: small parts only.

No paint. Violet for the details.

Titanium is left bare, so there's no paint to chip. Brush it, blast it, or mix the two. The one colour is anodised on small parts: it isn't paint or dye, it's a layer of oxide grown on the metal with electricity, and its thickness sets the colour, bronze, then violet, then blue as the voltage rises. That's where this page's violet comes from.

A rider in a long-sleeved olive jersey and helmet on a bare titanium gravel bike, side-on on a pale gravel road in the Adelaide Hills, the grass behind streaked by the pan.
Adelaide Hills, early. Long sleeves, wide tyres, nowhere to be.

Now go the long way home.

Gravel in the Hills, a sealed climb before work, a loaded week down the coast. Tell us which, and we'll draw for it.

A loaded bare titanium touring bike with racks, bags and mudguards leans on a dry-stone wall above a calm sea.
Loaded and leaning: racks front and rear, guards, and room for the bags.
A rider in a headscarf and long sleeves sits on a fit rig while the builder, crouching beside it, adjusts the saddle height with a hex key.

The numbers start the conversation.

The drawing on this page is a model: a few rules of thumb and your two measurements. A fitting is you. We measure you, ask where and how far you ride and what you carry, look at the bike you ride now if you have one, and watch you pedal on a fit bike in the workshop. Then we draw.

Every number the fitting changes goes on the drawing, and you'll see why it moved. Bring your riding shoes, and the saddle you like if you have one.

Start your drawing.

Tell us who you are and where you ride. If you've drawn a frame above, your numbers are already here.

Any way to reach you. This form isn't connected, so nothing is kept.

Where you ride

A starting point. Your fitting decides.

Finish

This form isn't connected: it sends nothing.