As before, once more.

Hi research pals,

It’s been too long. I’m happy to finally share what I’ve been working on for a few months now, among many things — the W.R.T. brake cable yoke! Here’s your first official look:

If you spend a lot of time looking into our bike nerd predecessors of the early to mid 20th century, you may find this a slightly familiar shape. I am throwing it back to the 1930s here, modernizing the aesthetics a little bit and going for a more refined look than “manually constructeur’d.”

If you do know the maker I’m referencing and you want a set of these at 25% off, DM me on instagram. 1 discount available; void if we’ve already talked about it!

The WRT is a traditional pulley hanger, with the tolerances designed such that the pulley can easily be immobilized by adding a 0.040” washer in the case of brakes without spring adjustment. They weigh in at 10g (0.35oz) each, including the stainless pulley bolt and set screw.

They’ll be available in pairs, in 5 color ways: silver or black body with silver or gold pulley, as well as black/black (not pictured). I made the price as nice as I could at my scale — $69/usd per pair.

These are machined from 6061-T6 aluminum and anodized right here in Portland, OR. The initial run will be available only from shovelresearch.com starting on Friday Dec 6 at 12pm PST.

If all goes as planned the website should look much improved by then, as well.

The packaging is something that I spent a (perhaps disproportionately) significant amount of time thinking about. The result is simple, but it also deviates from my usual in that it includes one component that is non-recyclable waste — the wire ties on Rod Steward packaging are the only other bit of my packaging that isn’t totally paper based.

I ended up 3d printing small shoulder bolts for packaging that, although cute (and technically biodegradable), won’t have a real purpose once you unpack the WRTs. Although I am a big fan of 3d printing for prototyping, shop and home organization, and some tooling, I think it’s wildly overused for packaging and (especially!) products. I actively avoid using 3d printing in the things I sell because my intention is to maximize the lifespan of anything I create or buy.

I look forward to coming up with a better and similarly effective/low-cost solution in the future. Here’s some images of an assembly tray I made to mount the pulleys and the little shoulder bolts — ideal and non-ideal uses of 3d printing, ATMO.

Here’s an IRL close up - get your cantis and centerpulls ready. Thanks for reading!