Notes on Building My First 32-Inch All-Terrain Bike

Inspiration / Culture
Jesse Turner

By Jesse Turner

Guest Contributor

@sss.bike

Curious to see what all the buzz is about, Jesse Turner of Slow Southern Steel in Fayetteville, Arkansas, recently fabricated his first 32-inch bike. The result is a striking singlespeed titanium ATB with a truss fork from Black Sheep and a one-of-a-kind finish from Rare Earth. Find Jesse’s short reflection on building his debut 32er here…

PUBLISHED Aug 11, 2026

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Conversation

Photos by Aaron Arnzen

When I first heard that Maxxis had made a 32-inch tire a couple of years ago, I thought to myself, “Great, another new standard.” I immediately wrote it off and figured I’d never build one. Fast forward to last summer at the MADE bike show in Portland, and big-wheeled bikes were all the rage. After seeing the custom 32-inch builds from BTCHN’, Neuhaus, and Falconer in person, my heart began to soften, and curiosity set in.

  • 32-inch bikes 2025 made bike show
  • 32-inch bikes 2025 made bike show, falconer
A couple of 32-inch bikes on display at MADE 2025

In the following weeks, the urge to build one grew, and I began scheming. I needed a tall guy—a victim—to test my geometry ideas on. I started to set my sights on friends who might be tall enough and willing to hire me to build a bike with this new wheel size. The perfect opportunity came about a month after MADE, when Hot Springs, Arkansas, local Randy Windle stopped by my shop in Fayetteville to pick up the custom Rare Earth I’d brought home for him from the show. At first, despite presenting my best sales pitch, Randy didn’t seem too interested. But a few months later, having had a change of heart, he reached back out to me.

  • Slow Southern Steel
  • Slow Southern Steel
From our look inside the Slow Southern Steel workshop

Randy wanted a new bikepacking race rig for his 2026 season, but he had one special request: make it from titanium. At first I almost said no. Building out of Ti seemed daunting, and figuring out a new wheel size already seemed like enough of a challenge. But not wanting to miss out on an opportunity, I caved, and the design process began.

Design

Randy is what I would like to call a “bicycle curator” and had a clear picture of what he wanted out of the build and frame. He left me room to cook when it came to tubing selection, geometry, and frame aesthetics. Randy really is a dream customer for a builder. To lighten my workload, we decided to outsource the fork to Blacksheep, and the finish work to Brian of Rare Earth.

  • Slow Southern Steel 32" Bike
  • Slow Southern Steel 32" Bike

Initial Design Goals:

  • Titanium single-speed-focused ATB frame and fork with thoughtful cargo capacity for bikepacking
  • Fit and handling similar to his Black Sheep
  • Compatibility with the unique parts he wanted to use (listed below)

Randy really liked how his Black Sheep 29er handled, and he loved the fit, so I tried to design something with similar cockpit dimensions, rear center, front center, and trail numbers that he was used to. Since Randy is a dedicated single-speeder running 175 mm cranks, I also wanted to keep the bottom bracket height from being so low that he would strike his pedals on rocks. Those goals made the design work pretty easy; since he’s a taller guy, it wasn’t too hard to massage numbers in BikeCAD and end up with something I thought would work.

Slow Southern Steel 32" Bike
  • Slow Southern Steel 32" Bike
  • Slow Southern Steel 32" Bike
  • Slow Southern Steel 32" Bike

However, I quickly realized that the standard 29” rigid fork dimensions were not going to cut it. We needed more offset if we didn’t want a high trail number and steering that felt more like a trail bike than a pure-bred bikepacking machine. The bigger wheels inherently slow down the steering, which I knew Randy wasn’t really going for. I scoured the web and talked with a handful of others who had ridden 32” wheels already. I ended up taking advice from Whit at Meriwether and going with 60 mm of fork offset. I sent the dimensions to James at Black Sheep, and he agreed that it should ride nicely. Knowing both of them had built with the bigger wheels, I’m glad I took their advice.

  • Slow Southern Steel 32" Bike
  • Slow Southern Steel 32" Bike

Some other requests from Randy included internal brake and dynamo routing, bolt-on frame bag and top tube bag mounts, top tube bottle cage mount, full rack mounts, Paragon Machine Works sliding dropout system, and an ultra-cool portage handle on the left side, because Randy likes to hop off on the right.

Early Thoughts

Randy was nice enough to let me take the bike on a few real rides before I handed it over, something I don’t normally do on a customer’s bike. It rides great. Maybe it’s just not that hard to design a bike that rides well, but I was truly impressed by how natural it felt when I first rode it in the gravel driveway of my shop. The steering didn’t feel weird or sluggish, with no noticeable heavy wheel flop. The wheels didn’t initially feel any slower to spin up or any harder to stop. It felt very similar to what I’m used to feeling on my similar-style 29” bike.

Slow Southern Steel 32" Bike
  • Slow Southern Steel 32" Bike
  • Slow Southern Steel 32" Bike

Once I got out on the trail, I really started to feel the differences. It is smoother than a 29er at pedaling speeds on the rocky and rooty trails we have here in Fayetteville. You notice it even more when you point it downhill. I noticed the bigger wheels were slightly more sluggish than I was used to on tighter turns and harder to get rolling again after the bike lost momentum. Overall, though, for a fully rigid bike, I think 32” has its clear advantages. On faster-rolling trails and gravel, it feels like a more efficient option than a smaller wheel size.

Findings

I’m no expert, just a framebuilder and bike nerd who thinks about this stuff way too much. I am proud of how this frame turned out and grateful for Randy trusting me to build it for him. He’s already accomplished a lot on it, becoming the first-ever single-speed finisher of the Fayetteville Ultra Circuit and the first person to complete the MOzark 1,300+ mile bikepacking route. That has to be my favorite part about being a framebuilder: creating something that helps people accomplish their goals. It is so rewarding.

Slow Southern Steel 32" Bike
  • Slow Southern Steel 32" Bike
  • Slow Southern Steel 32" Bike
  • Slow Southern Steel 32" Bike

In my opinion, 32-inch bikes are awesome and will find their home on the XC/gravel/bikepacking end of the bike spectrum. I don’t think they’re for everyone, but for some, they’ll fit their style just right. Now, I just need to find the time to build one for myself!

Randy’s SSS 32” ATB Build Kit

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