We’ve gotten a few Gilles Berthoud products in.  Among them is a saddle that I’m very excited about.   The saddle is a Gilles Berthoud.  It looks at first a little like a Brooks, and it’s this similarity that excites me.   The Berthoud is made from very thick high quality leather, which is screwed down to the saddle body.  Where the Brooks saddle body is all metal, the Berthoud has metal rails and a plastic back (called a cantle).  The plastic cantle is reputed to be amazingly strong and is designed to have a tiny bit of flex for extra comfort.  The looks of the plastic might put some people off though.

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Wheel building is one of our favourite jobs.  As well as being rewarding work to get the wheel true and strong, it’s satisfying to figure out the best combination of parts and best set-up for a particular customer.  As well as the rims and hubs, the spokes and nipples are important things to think about, and choosing the right ones will make a real difference to the reliability of the wheel and how well suited it is to its intended use.  Being able to tailor all of these choices to a particular rider is what puts custom wheels ahead in the hand-built vs factory-built debate.

We’re one of the few bikeshops in Melbourne who specialise in custom wheel building and sell far more hand built wheels than factory built wheels at the medium to high end.  This post is intended as a discussion of some of the variables involved, and hopefully the huge range of possibilities will highlight why hand built wheels which are custom-built for a particular application are going to do that job better than factory-built wheels.  This post is long, and has some technical discussion of both component choices and then of the process of building itself, but it is not a how-to guide, so only click on read more if you’re keen.

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VO Porteur racks are back in stock. They’re a great rack for commuting bikes since they can hold a lot and can easily take additional load if you have to grab something on the way home.  They’re also very beautiful.

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We now stock Grand Bois tyres. These are some of the nicest tyres we know of. Grand Bois is a small Japanese company catering to Cyclotourists with a fetish for nice old French bikes. They offer a very wide range of 650b road tyres as well as some nice 700c tyres, all with a nice old-school look and tan sidewalls.

Sealed Grand Bois tyres

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