There will always be a place for the classic lugged steel frame and there have never been as many quality lug styles to choose from. From the simple to the ornate, Tim can produce any style of lugged frame the rider desires - featuring all the classic, road bike style cues.

But thanks to the mountain bike, the compact road frame has become accepted as the most efficient form for a racing-style bike. Why compact geometry? Because a shorter tube is a lighter tube. And a shorter tube is a more rigid tube. A compact frame saves weight and improves stiffness. Both qualities enhance the performance of the bike.

Lugged construction depends on a wide variety of angle-specific top- and seat-tube lugs, so compact frames with custom angles require another joining method. At Lighthouse Cycles that means fillet-brazed lugless construction. Tim has built hundreds of fillet-brazed frames and several fillet-brazed tandems over the years. Most of his current production is compact fillet-brazed road racers.

Today's producers of steel tubing continue to make progress with new alloys that create super-strong, thin-wall tubes. The new tubes produce the wonderful, uniquely steel, ride quality with nearly no weight penalty.

Lighthouse Cycles uses only the best modern steel tubes from Columbus. Tim often mixes tube gauges to suit a specific rider. Modern steel, compact geometry and intelligent component selection can easily produce a complete bike weighing under 17½ pounds.

Tim typically uses Enve composite forks on new compact Lighthouses. Enve state-of-the-art forks are produced in a variety of rakes, allowing perfect handling characteristics with a variety of head angles. If you choose a classic Lighthouse lugged frame, Tim can build you a steel fork for it.