Three hours northwest of Denver, Colorado is the small ski town of Steamboat Springs. While best known for it’s skiing it is also the home of Moots Cycles, one of the premium titanium bike builders in the world. Famous for their simplistic and purposeful designs, Moots has been building custom bikes since 1981 and working in titanium for the past seventeen years. Road Bike Action was recently invited to tour the Moots factory and see how they make their titanium marvels.


Every Moots bicycle is constructed using straight gauge US made 3/2.5 titanium. Moots uses straight gauge tubing instead of double butted tubing because it provides them with more tube diameter options, which allows them to tune the ride of the bicycle for different sized frames. By using straight gauge they are also able to cold work the tubes to enhance the ride characteristics by ovalizing or bending tubes where needed. Finally, the straight gauge tubes allow Moots to build custom frames in any size or shape.

The tubing is first cut to the desired length and once the tube is cut the ends are mitered to fit smoothly with other tubes. Surprisingly all the mitering is done by hand and with a limited amount of specialized tools.


Once the mitering is complete the down tube, seat and chainstays are cold forged into the right shape. Cold forging is used so that the properties of the titanium are not affected by the addition of heat.

All the scrape pieces of titanium are saved and recycled. This includes everything from shavings to sections of tubing.

Before a tube set can be welded into a frame, some of the frame fittings such as the bottom bracket need to be machined. It is for this purpose that Moots has built a complete CNC machine shop. Here everything from bottom brackets to water bottle mounts are machined.

A good example of the machining process is shown in the handlebar clamp for a Moots stem. The stem clamp starts as a solid piece of titanium. The first round of machining takes away most of the extra material, while the second round does the more detailed machining and gives the piece its final shape. 

Once all the tubes have been mitered and the machined parts are finished, everything moves to the welding department. When all the parts arrive they are thoroughly cleaned using an ultra sonic bath. This is done to remove any oils or dirt that may contaminate the welding process.

After the tubes and fittings are clean they are placed in a jig for tact welding. Not surprisingly, what Moots calls tact welding produces some the cleanest welds ever seen. Titanium has to be welded in an oxygen free environment so once all the tubes are placed in the jig the frame is filled with argon gas. Each frame takes about twenty-five minutes to fill with the gas. Once the tubes are filled the welder uses a special welding tip that blows argon over the welding surface to further prevent oxygen contamination.

Once the frame is tact welded in the jig it moves over to a welding stand for the second and final welding pass. This final welding process involves refilling the frame with argon and completely welding each frame joint, including those already done in the tact welding phase. This is where the term "second pass" comes from. While this is standard practice at Moots,  some manufactures only do one pass to save time and money.

After the frame is finished being welded it is checked for alignment by using an alignment table. A Moots road frame has only .003-inch maximum variance from the head tube to rear dropouts.

The next step after a frame passes inspection is finishing. The frame is finished by bead blasting using very fine glass beads. Each frame takes about forty-five minutes to finish. Once the frame comes out of the finishing booth it is coated with Lemon Pledge of all things. This helps preserve and protect the bikes finish.