It was a dark and stormy night when I reached up and pulled an investment cast steel seat collar off a hook on my workbench and put it in my left front pocket before I headed out to the company holiday party because I knew there was a good chance I was going to see Steve Gluckman there as he’s on the board of directors. When I arrived early Steve was already there and when I got around to chatting with him I said “I’ve got something for you” and before it got to his hand he knew exactly what it was. He smiled and said “lost wax” and told me a bit about the process and we had an interesting conversation about bike companies and the choices they make in production and OE. I like to visualize a large conference room table at Novara in the late 90s where someone was able to convince all the other someones that these sweet steel seat collars were a good idea and I’d like to thank that someone 19 years later and say “good call”
I’ve stripped a shit load of busted bikes for parts down to the bottle cage bolts and seat collars do not go unnoticed. In 2016 we received no less than 7,547 donated bicycles. That's a lot of seat collars, seat post binder bolts, quick releases and straight-up seized seat posts. Over the past 4.67 years I’ve collected several of these steel collars but didn’t really realize they were from Novara until recently while in the men's room I read this review from November 1999 Bicycling magazine where the coolest thing about the bike was the sweet steel seat collar and then it all came together.
If you don’t know who Steve Gluckman is, this story will help and after you read that I’d like to point out that I have at least 3 examples of Steve's first bike computer in my archives. If you don’t know what Novara means it doesn’t matter they changed the name. And here’s a little ditty about lost wax and finding out where it's not
Finally if you don’t know what a seat collar is that’s ok too.
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