Every time I build a bicycle, I try to take something (or many things) to a higher level. I didn’t see a detail until after I got my recent bike, the Millennium Falcon, back from paint. I wish that I had thought of it in time.
I had decided to add some reinforcement washers under my water bottle bosses to improve the durability of my frames. I haven’t had a water bottle boss fail or the tube around it but it is something that I think about from time to time. We’ve been pushing water bottle bosses harder every year for the last few, pushing more and more demands on them.
The results came out great. Just the right proportions and not too distracting.
What I hadn’t realized at the time was that I should have modified the head of the boss to bring the overall height down. This is important as we want to keep the bike tidy and reduce how much anything projects. Every millimeter matters.
I’ve been using the Frame Builder Supply 100-pack – sku # FS-BM5-100, $ 89.55. They have a nice broad 9.0mm top which is very nice and would even be nicer if it were 10.0mm. I used the bosses from Nova long ago but stopped because the FBS bosses had a larger head than the 8.0mm head of the Nova.
Here, shaving just 0.75mm from the top of the boss would have made the difference. It would have really turned a cap into a cape.
I would like to do a run of custom bottle bosses with the flange built into them and then bent to shape. That would be the cleanest and most prefered system. I just need to push resources (read, money) toward that. Another day.