Moorhuhn: From Steel to Titanium

Moorhuhn 

Some projects you plan. Others just keep growing until they take over your workshop, your evenings and, in this case, half the bike internet. The Moorhuhn is the second kind. It started as a question I could not let go of: can steel be sexy again? Not nostalgic. Not retro. Sexy. In a world of swoopy carbon exotica, I wanted to prove that a steel full-suspension bike can be modern, elegant and technically serious, all at once.

Why "Moorhuhn"?

People always ask about the name. Huhn means chicken in German. Chickens live in the dirt, yet they look elegant. They walk with their heads up high and never lose focus. And they can fly, at least for short distances. Mountain bikes do the same. Also, my workshop used to be a chicken coop. At some point the universe just makes the decision for you.

It all started with steel

The Moorhuhn took three years to come to life, and it began long before the first lug was printed. I built a traditional geometry mule first and spent a lot of time playing with the linkage until the rear end felt exactly right. The layout is a single pivot with a shock extension. Simple, honest, easy to service, and with the kinematics dialed it rides beautifully. The travel is 129 mm. Why not 130? Because everybody does 130, and the Huhn wants to be different.

Printing the lugs

The heart of the bike is the lugs. They are additively manufactured in a laser powder-bed process, printed from 17/4 PH or 316L stainless steel. A friend gave me access to a metal printer, and the rest of the bike came together with the sweat of my brow. Printing gives you things no other process can: a honeycomb structure inside the lug that puts strength exactly where it is needed, double-walled shells connected by fine lattices, integrated cable routing, and free-form transitions between the tubes for better load distribution. Density is 99.9 percent, better than casting. And because there is no tooling, every frame can have its own geometry.

Building it

The tubes are the classics done right: Reynolds 953 stainless for the front triangle, Columbus Zona for the rear. I joined everything with a mix of welding and brazing, then spent more hours than I want to admit with a file in my hand so the printed parts and the tubes read as one single shape. Even the brake mounts are printed and brazed onto the seatstays.

The finish

For the showbike I sanded and polished the whole frame to a near-mirror finish. The top tube was masked with foil and got a colored chromovelato clear coat, a little homage to the Italian racers of the past. It was a painstaking amount of work, and I would not do it for every frame, but for this one it had to be perfect.

Then the internet found it. Pinkbike ran it under the headline "Make Steel Sexy Again" and 240 comments later I knew the question had hit a nerve. MTB-News called it a shiny 3D-printed sensation. Singletrack wrote about it. I mostly kept filing.

The European Bike Challenge

The complete build was my contribution to #theeuropeanbikechallenge: build a full-suspension mountain bike made as close to 100 percent in Europe as possible. That turned the Moorhuhn into a rolling who's who of European manufacturing. Suspension by Intend, brakes by Trickstuff from Freiburg, a fully machined drivetrain by Ingrid, the integrated Gemini bar-stem combo with a stem just 20 mm short, a Vecnum NIVO dropper made in the Allgäu, True BC carbon rims on Extralite hubs, Carder pedals and Hutchinson tires. Every single part has a story and a face behind it.

Four builders entered the challenge: Alex from The European Bike Project with his Crossworx Dash 29, Gian with the Antidote Carbonjack 29, Kilian Reil with the Project 12 Cycleworks Vertigo, and me with the Huhn 129. In the end the Moorhuhn took first place. Standing next to bikes like that, the win meant a lot.

Challenge photos by Kilian Reil.

Then it turned into titanium

What do you do when the steel bike is finished, polished and photographed from every possible angle? You build it again. This time from titanium. A titanium full-suspension bike had been a dream of mine for years, and the Moorhuhn platform was the perfect place to make it real.

All the lugs were printed from Ti-6Al-4V. The front triangle uses Grade 9 titanium tubes and the swingarm Grade 2, all supplied by Dedacciai. And because honest engineering also means knowing your limits: I did not have much experience welding titanium, so this bike became a collaboration with Mathias Scherer of Mawis Bikes, a frame builder with ten years of titanium experience. I had helped him with a printed fork crown for one of his builds, and in return Mathias welded the Moorhuhn Ti. Craft works like that.

Watch the bike being built here:

Why titanium? It drops a full kilogram compared to the steel frame without touching carbon. It does not need paint. It has a smaller footprint than the black weave and can be recycled at the end of its life. And it opens up finishes you simply cannot do on painted frames: I anodized the frame in the same color as the Intend fork lowers, masked it with stickers in the shape of feathers, and sandblasted it. A chicken gets its feathers back.

Geometry, travel and kinematics carried over from the steel bike one to one. If it works, it works.

The titanium version made its own round through the press, and world of mtb even put the Moorhuhn 129 Titan into their Best-of selection. Not bad for a bike named after a chicken.

The facts

• Travel: 129 mm rear, 140 mm fork recommended
• Wheels: 29"
• Head angle: 67°
• Seat tube angle: 76°
• Reach: 469.6 mm
• Chainstays: 434 mm
• Steel frame: Reynolds 953 front triangle, Columbus Zona rear, printed stainless lugs
• Titanium frame: printed Ti-6Al-4V lugs, Grade 9 front triangle, Grade 2 swingarm, tubes by Dedacciai, about 1 kg lighter
• Production: 12 frames per year, every geometry customizable within the character of the bike

What the Moorhuhn taught me

The Moorhuhn proved the point I set out to make: steel and titanium are not nostalgia, they are modern engineering materials, and additive manufacturing is the bridge that makes small-series, custom-geometry full-suspension frames possible without a single mold. Everything HUHN builds today stands on what this bike taught me: print where printing wins, weld where welding wins, and file until it looks like it grew that way.

Getting dirty is fun. Chickens live in the dirt, yet they look elegant. That was the idea. I think the Moorhuhn kept the promise.