Thursday, April 7, 2011

Curved for Comfort



Modern steel forks are generally incredibly stiff and not as comfortable as older designs (especially those trendy straight blade ones).
"But stiff forks make for better for handling!" you say. To which I respond, "What if you can have the comfort without sacrificing hardly anything in the handling department?"... You then fall speechless to the ground and kiss my feet..

The same thinking that led us to steel frames led us to the creation of the Classic Curve line of chromoly steel forks. We drew our inspiration from forks found on old Peugeots, Raleighs and Motobecanes. The main difference between Classic Curve forks and our current curved forks is the bend in the blade is concentrated in the lower part of the blade. They give any bike a vintage look, but the offset(rake) is the same as our other forks, so that steering stays crisp. Right now we have: two road fork versions(for 49mm and 57mm reach brakes), a track version and a cyclo-cross/trekking version.



13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Awesome. Been looking for something like this for awhile.

Any chance we could get the axle-to-crown measurements on the road 49 and track forks?

j.schwartz said...

Are these available in 1 inch threaded as well?

spiny norman said...

Threadless is better than threaded (yes it is), but 1 inch would be really nice.

Velocodger said...

I LOVE the SOMA steel fork that came with my Double Cross. I even put a 29" 2.2" mountain bike tire in and it fit! (barely!) My favorite fork of all time was the Tange Prestige unicrown fork that came with my Mt Tam fillet brazed mtn bike. This was before suspension existed, and I loved watching the fork flex over the bumps. It was always spot on when turning, the flex didn't negatively affect the handling. Keep up the good work SOMA!

Andre said...

Thanks for producing these aesthetically pleasing and functional forks.

It almost makes up for the quil-inator.

somacisco said...

We are doing threadless to start out.
1" is available only in the 49mm reach road fork and the track fork.

Anonymous said...

More offset please!!! Love what you have so far though.

Anonymous said...

Seconding the previous Anonymous here: a high-offset/low-trail version of the cross/trekking model would be, as Ferris Bueller said, so choice.

somervillain said...

If you could offer your forks with different amounts of offset, that would be awesome! I'm currently building up a Soma Buena Vista as a 650B city bike, and having more fork rake would make it a great front-hauler!

Mike M said...

Yes, low trail fork, please!

Anonymous said...

Yes, if you make a fork with more rake you'd have a customer.

Anonymous said...

Another appreciative vintage rider here.

But I'm also desperate for a threaded 1" classic track bend with less rake (38mm)! Surely it makes sense that the same customers who will want classic track forks won't be buying them with modern clunky threadless stems?

Anonymous said...

I'm a little late to the party, but, like the commentors above have said, you should really make a low-trail version (or a couple, say, with 60mm and 70mm of rake) of this. There's a growing market for low-trail conversion forks and there aren't currently any real mass-produced options available. They would sell like hot cakes.