Though I’ve known Josh Ogle since my college days, we haven’t spoken for some years. We reconnected via Instagram in the last year or two and finally caught up at the Sea Otter Classic. If you’re not familiar with Josh’s work, he was a frame designer and builder for some time, which culminated in his bike company called Jericho Bikes.
He’s always been more of a designer as opposed to the guy in the trenches, though. After closing up shop at Jericho and focusing on personal growth, he spent time fleshing out his design and engineering skillset and appears to have found his niche, designing and machining ridiculously lightweight and good-looking performance bike components.
His work was present at the Sea Otter show, on display on various bikes in the Mavic booth. Some of the coolest high-end bikes there were adorned with his titanium bicycle parts he’s been designing and manufacturing in his workshop in Durango, Colorado, including a limited edition bike of one that featured a 3d printed titanium front triangle that was called out by several media outlets as the coolest bike of the show.
Catching up on some of the trials and tribulations of life, we shared some of our experiences as humans who have evolved from 20-something mountain biking dirtbags to middle-aged, slightly more accomplished mountain biking nerds.
We used to ride XC mountain bikes in the hills above Eugene, Oregon, and later in the East Bay hills near Oakland, California. Since then, he’s traveled a bit and landed, setting up shop in Durango, Colorado.
In addition to designing his line of components, he’s also lending his design skills to other bike brands. Josh has always been interested in titanium, and while he’s worked with steel and aluminum in the past, most of his current focus is on fabricating high-end, performance bits from titanium. As I’ve been learning how to model in CAD myself over this last year, it was enlighting to hear more about his process. Made a few at a time, I learned more about the material costs as well as the wear and tear on the machine tools that add to the high cost of making ridiculously lightweight components with minimal heft.
Most of his output is focused on minimal lockrings, cogs, seat collars, and chain rings, but he also showcased his super light (and tested to be strong) stem.
I also got to see some cool work-in-progress designs of a replacement Shimano brake lever – made of titanium, of course.
As a parting gift, he sent me home with a Fat Man stem as well as a headset spacer cap, which I’ve been enjoying. The Fat Man and Little Boy Stems (for 35mm and 31.6mm bars) are serialized limited editions of 50 pieces each. Both are milled from forged grade 5 titanium with stainless m5x15 bolts. The Little Boy lists for $565 and the Fat Man for $610.
In testing, the Little Boy Stem took 5x (12.5 times the usual test load, according to Josh) the standard fatigue to failure test cycles at an ISO certified facility.
I have one bolted to my Specialized Stumpjumper EVO, and it’s easily the most expensive component on the bike. Needless to say, it looks pretty darn cool. So far it also seems to add a bit of compliance.
Drool over more titanium goodness at www.joshogledesign.com/.