Luis Scott, an avid road cyclist and steel bike aficionado, caught up with storied framebuilder Tom Ritchey at Sea Otter 2025 and caught some magic live on camera. Watch their conversation here…

Although it’s certainly not the hotly contested topic some imagine it to be, a discussion of tube diameters and disc brakes was what Tom Ritchey ended up focusing on when YouTuber Luis Scott caught up with him at Sea Otter 2025. With Tom’s new book detailing everything from personal failures to his success as a framebuilder and bike industry trendsetter, Luis’ relatively innocuous comment about head tube diameters prompted Tom to cite the book and elaborate on the minutiae of one of the bike’s most overlooked features. What followed was an intriguing diatribe about bike design.

In essence, Tom talks about the nature of how bike design has moved toward safety and a mindset of liability as opposed to real “bike feel.” Spurned on by the diameter and nature of 1″ head tubes, Tom points out that the head tube on the Ritchey Road Logic, while 1 1/8″ threadless, is actually a 1″ diameter. The specifics of what he details are worth listening to from Tom himself, but it leads to a larger discussion about how disc brake design requires a greater reinforcement of fork blades and how that affects the “feel” of the road through the bike. Watch it above.

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