Stainless bits!

New things in the works at Ellis, small but cool. For the last couple years I've been offering internal cable routing with a pretty conventional setup, steel ferrules at the ends, and a brass tube that the bare cable runs through. While this works fine, there are a couple potential downsides to this setup in the long run. The steel ends are hard to get good paint coverage inside, so they're prone to rust, and the brass tube and actually get worn through by the cable over a long period of time.

I asked my supplier if he'd ever consider getting the parts in stainless and while he agreed that it sounded like a good idea, he wasn't too interested in the extra cost it would involve and he already had quite a few of the existing parts. Next step, call Mark at Paragon and see what it would cost to get stainless ferrules made. Well, a sample and about $300 later, I got a small bag in the mail...



Stainless ferrules, and I managed to find 5/32" stainless tube for the cable run pretty easily from McMaster Carr, so now the entire internal routing is stainless steel. You can see both bits in the photo below.

Also in the photo, some cool new front dropouts from Keith Anderson, the TITO. These are steel plate with a special stainless insert, the perfect compliment to the Ellis 17/4 stainless rear dropouts! More pics below.

The other stainless touches will include washers on both the brake bridge and fork crown, and all the waterbottle bosses will now be stainless as well.

Here's some progression shots of the TITO's! It's probably cooler when you watch Keith video on Flickr.

All brazed up and finished, pretty sweet!

I'll post more of this build soon!