Decision time has come and we want your opinion. We have been on the fence about a full carbon fiber fork for a couple of years. From an engineering and liability standpoint it is a nightmare. Poor to moderate impact resistance. Prone to catastrophic failures. Grossly expensive to develop a full custom fork that is not bonded together. Flakey tensile and yield strength issues. These are just a few of the reasons we decided to go old school and stick with a titanium product built to our specifications. We can come close in weight to a carbon fork (1 pound and change), provide similar dampening properties, all while having a more durable product. The issue comes down to how old school do we want to go. Which of the following would you rather see as the consumer/industry worker/general online ranter:
1)All Titanium
2)Titanium Legs/Carbon Crown/Titanium Steerer
3)Titanium Legs/Carbon Crown/Carbon Steerer (We truly fear the carbon steerer, but want to hear your input)
The fork will only be available for our Dillinger frame. This will mean a 485mm axle to crown, 45mm offset, straight 1 1/8 steer tube, and post mounts.

Where is that carbon fork Soul Cycles promised? Here is a history of the never ending carbon fork saga that may answer your questions.

PART 1 OF THE SAGA
(REVERIE)
The original carbon fork plan was to import a lightweight crown forging similar to a suspension fork crown from Taiwan, machine a custom set of dropouts and crown plugs domestically, and work with Edge Composites in Utah to create either a set of straight or butted set of carbon legs using some interesting layering processes to increase dampening. Then the plan was to fabricate a fixture and perform final assembly in our warehouse in Arizona. Everything was on target with this idea until we started mocking up the forks. Even though it was basically a custom fork and bells and whistles were being developed like laser etched crowns with 2 color ED plating (similar to anodizing) the thing just looked dated. Pretty colored dropouts, crowns, and colored fiberglass wrapped legs just did not look right. It looked like every Taiwanese catalog fork out there with colors even though it wasn’t. On top of this we ran into steerer tube issues. Should it be aluminum? Should it be carbon? How are we going to safely press or bond it into place? After all these dilemmas and more we scrapped this version of the fork.

PART 2 OF THE SAGA (REGRESSION)
Now in a panic after spending months on the first carbon fork concept the idea was thrown out to modify an existing design from another company. Companies like SASO in Taiwan put out acceptable mid-level carbon forks. Even on higher end of the spectrum carbon companies like Trigon put out some truly amazing forks from Taiwan. Even if we could get these companies to modify designs to meet our unusual specifications (485mm axle to crown and 45mm offset for the 29er fork) we quickly decided against it. Every company under the sun has been selling forks from these companies under their brand and we want something truly custom and want to produce it in the United States if possible.

PART 3 OF THE SAGA (REVERIE PART 2)
With the semi-custom fork option no longer on the table we moved towards creating a full custom carbon fork from a mold of our design. The resources to do this were not an issue, but the costs were. Initial mold fabrication estimates came in between $4000 and $9000 per mold. The reality was that we would need to run through 3-5 molds to end up with a final product that would pass world consumer safety standards and be an ideal product in our minds. On top of this we were faced with minimum order quantities that would have brought the total project to around $60,000 when everything was complete and ready to come to market. A number we are not willing to invest at this time. The reality is that carbon forks on a per unit basis are not as expensive to produce as consumers imagine. Typical catalog carbon forks run around $50-$110 at cost in small quantities of 100 units. Custom units also fall in this same range but the mold cost needs to be added to the equation along with some other costs. The unfortunate issue is that carbon is still a questionable material for mountain bike frame and fork use, another reason why we just can’t see investing this kind of money into a custom mold at this point and producing a fairly large quantity. The technology behind carbon frames and forks has improved drastically over the past few years, but the reality remains that it is still less safe than aluminum, magnesium, and steel.

PART 4 OF THE SAGA (REALITY)
As of right now we are examining one final option for a carbon fork. We are looking at machining a crown and dropouts domestically and considering working once again with Edge Composites to create the legs and aid in the testing. We have been able to locate a company in the United States that can press aluminum steer tubes and are slowly moving forward with this concept. The goal is to create a aesthetically pleasing fork that fits super wide tires without a low weight restriction like many carbon products have, all while keeping it well under 2 pounds. We don’t want to create the lightest product on the market, but instead want to focus on creating an affordable one that reduces vibration, saves some weight, and matches up appropriately with our frames.