10/06/2026
Nobody was asking for it. But we were pretty sure everybody was dreaming about it. Introducing the Firefly Titanium All Road rim brake bike.
One day in the shop, not so long ago, we were casually talking about the beauty of mechanical things, and then we just said it: “We should build a modern rim brake road bike for 40mm tires… and we should start with the fork!” Well, that quickly snowballed, and next thing you know we roped in Josh Ogle, and with literally zero convincing, I think he said “F**K YEAH! LET’S DO THIS!” and it was game on.
We needed some brakes that were up to the task, and we needed them to be rad, so we had a conversation with Cane Creek about modifying the eeBrakes they designed for the high-end Brompton bikes to work with traditional road brake levers, and they said something very similar to what Josh said, but without the swearing, yet just as enthusiastic.
We feel like there are a lot of cool things going on with this bike. We belabored the details. Some of them you will have to find on your own, but our favorite moment is the dropout to wheel interface. It’s a tiny thru-axle (we’re calling it a thru bolt) with polished brass bits on either end holding a traditional quick-release hub securely and precisely in super light 3D printed dropouts, front and rear. It gives us a weird and satisfying feeling… Visual Freedom comes to mind as a description.
We’re not saying we are here to save the rim brake… but we’re here to save the rim brake.
Can we talk about how this project snowballed for a second? It was out of hand. It was more than we bargained for, but we were hooked, and had to see it through to the end.
“We should make a titanium road brake bike for caliper brakes,” we said. We already make all the other kinds of titanium forks. Let’s just do that. Right?
So here we go, Josh is like “Sure, we kinda already have the crown; we can just alter it a little for the caliper brake. No big deal.” Right?! Well, that was no big deal. Whew.
The best braking surface material for caliper brakes is aluminum right? (prove us wrong, please) What’s out there? What’s nice? The Mavic Ksyrium SLs are a time-tested North Star (also, prove us wrong, lol). Let’s work with those.
So we designed some 3D printed dropouts for the caliper fork like on all our other fork models but it turns out the traditional quick release mechanism isn’t the best approach in this application. With the 3D printed dropout design, we can make it lighter, stiffer, and more secure using a thru-bolt the size of a quick release skewer. So that's what we did! A long stainless bolt, brass inserts in the dropouts… cradling the bolt head on one end and threaded on the other, the wheel slides up into the dropout, the skewer goes through and screws into the other side.
At this point we thought we were done... But Wwat about the dropouts on the frame?!?!”
This is where it snowballed.
The frame NEEDS dropouts to complement the fork dropouts. Same thru-bolt, same little brass nuggets... I guess this project is done (again)!
But wait! That fork crown sure looks nice! Wouldn’t it kinda be cool if we made wishbone seatstays that complemented the fork and visually tied the front end with the rear end? Yeah! That would be cool! But is there an advantage other than the obvious aesthetic complement? Hm… pretty sure no. Love it, let’s do it!
So that’s a small insight into the many months-long saga of what started as a small idea, “We should make a titanium road brake bike for caliper brakes,” and led us to saving the rim brake. Not that we are here to save the rim brake… but we are here to save the rim brake. But let us be very clear that we are also not here to destroy the disc brake. We absolutely love disc brakes. We contain multitudes and have a great capacity to love many things. Especially bike stuff.
