I guess I am pretty much done with my equipment for this upcoming season (knock on wood). Mike at BCS dialed me in on my hand built Mavic Reflex/DT Hugi 240 wheel set. Threw the Dugasts on there to stretch a bit before they have to get glued on.

Interesting tidbit that many of you will yawn at because you already know but I never realized: The latex tubes in sew-ups like Dugasts leak air so much more quickly than butyl tubes. Don't worry when they seem like they may be slow leaking (after a day or two). They're fine. It's just that the latex rubber is way more permeable than butyl. The latex advantage is its suppleness. You do not quite get the same level of suppleness with butyl apparently but we'll see. Thanks Evan for telling me that!

Mad style points:

• Rare 26" Dugast and Custom Ritchey Carbon Rims: Check.
• White Radars, Helmet, Gloves and White Sex: Check

A mini-Frischi protege' indeed.

Nice! I got my beautifully repaired Dugast Rhino back from Ron at Tire Alert. I will let you know how it all works once I get them all glued on but the inspection of his work is nearly flawless. Hard to tell the difference between the original Dugast and his repaired version. All said and done it was like $20 bucks and about 2 weeks. Super fast!

Tire Alert on the left, original on the right.

Barley noticeable re-stitching.

Sven's obviously a huge Dugast fan, and has used them for cross like essentially every top pro does in Europe (even when they color the sidewalls green and label them Challenge...). He's using them them for his MTB excursions and his ultimate goal of getting to the 2008 Olympics for MTB for Belgie. But having MTB'd for almost 2 decades, and seen all kinds of courses, I just don't know how these tires and carbon hoops can take it. He and Frischi use these religiously for MTB, so the suppleness and lightness (way lighter than a tubeless casing/wheel set up) must be worth the risk. I personally don't think the cotton casings are as robust as I'd personally want them for carving on an MTB. I get it on the CX bike to the extent I am never looking back, but MTB's are another story. Even with this Dugie flattening, he still podiumed at this race....although 3rd to Fil-epo's 1st on the day.

So I got the Dugast's, fill them up that day with some air to test 'em when I got them and 1 of the 4 is bunk! So pissed. It came defective which I am shocked at. I figured they would have checked them before shipping! Air gushes out through the cotton past the valve stem. It made me weepy.

They are cherry though. I am stretching them on their hoops now before I glue them in a couple of months (yes they're on backwards, geeks).
Tread pattern is sickly aggressive which is good and the 32's are super beefy. They're demonstrably beefier than the Challenge Griffo 32's.

So got to get this one runt of my litter repaired. Talked to Ron at Tire Alert and he can do it no probs. Just peeved that I need to spend more money on a brand new $100 tire.

Mmmm. The box of Dugast's arrived. Their 32's are like the 34's of other brands. Super big knobs and sidewalls...way bigger their their Typhoon treads or Tufo's for that matter.

Mounting in the coming week.s Maybe I'll do a gluing YouTube tutorial or something but I'm no pro. Got the Jedi training from Dwayne at BCS last year when I mounted those p.o.s. Challenge Griffos.

Scored. Don't even want to use them. Just polish the cotton side walls:

Well, it looks like this guy has most of the surplus of Dugasts around his neck! this is a gret article on A-Dugast's which are the most lusted after rubber known to man. If you haven't ridden them, there is a true/real/demonstrable difference in their feel and hook-up. Just as expensive as all hell.

This is copied from CyclocrossWorld:

Keeper of the Cotton
by Chris Milliman

Here are the facts: an elderly Frenchman, André Dugast made tires the old fashioned way. Cotton casing with hand glued treads made the Dugast tubulars a perfect combination of light weight and responsiveness. Their indescribable ride characteristics emanated from their old world construction methods, methods that kept the original output to something just greater than a dribble. If you wanted Dugasts you had to go to France.

Enter Richard Nieuwhuis. In 2001 Nieuwhuis, personal mechanic to Dutch cyclocross legend Richard Groenendaal, took a load of tires back to Dugast to get re-conditioned. After a long conversation that continued on to the World Championships in Zolder, Belgium, André Dugast, then 72, asked Nieuwhuis and Groenendaal to buy the company from him.

“It was not a big decision,” remembers Nieuwhuis. “Mr. Dugast used to make about 40 tires a week, that was fine for him.It got him enough money so he could buy himself some nice wine. It was good for him. Maybe he would sometimes make 80 tires a week but he really didn’t want to make more.”

Seeing an opportunity to bring Dugast production to a wider market Nieuwhuis bought the molds, the tools, and the secrets that had allowed Dugast to create cotton casing racing tires with an otherworld suppleness and feel. Everything was moved to Holland and a larger production of the famous and rare tires began.

Today Dugast can turn out up to 108 tires a day from its seven-worker factory but averages somewhere around 400 a week. Cyclocross tires make up about 25 percent of the company’s tire production with the other 75 percent going to road racing tires.

“The hardest part is to keep improving the product,” says Nieuwhuis. “Always I am trying to make them lighter while keeping them safe, staying ahead of the competition. It’s because of my relationships with the other tire and rubber companies that I can use the newest materials and keep moving forward.”

Nieuwhuis admitted that he does extensive private label and custom production for larger more mainstream tire companies, producing specialty tires for their road and cyclocross squads. While you’re never likely to see the Dugast emblem on the tires used by a Pro Tour team at Paris-Roubaix the chances are good that many of the tires were made by Nieuwhuis.

As for cyclocross, responding to requests for a better mud tread than the old school Typhoon pattern Nieuwhuis introduced the Rhino tread design in 2005. Dugast had become know for custom making mud tires using other companies’ tread glued onto Dugast casing, but the Rhino put that bit of custom business to sleep. Nieuwhuis says one of the major trends in ‘cross tires in the past few years has been the move to bigger tires.

“We’re seeing a lot more people wanting the 34mm tires. I think it has to do with the courses and the later winters,” says Nieuwhuis. “The riders are now racing in shirt sleeves in December sometimes, no mud, no shit on the ground. That makes the courses bumpy and on that you want comfort and for comfort you want a 34.”

Nieuwhuis is nothing if not a tire fanatic. He’s constantly toying with new glue to use with the tires, new rim strips to build up the rims for better tire adhesion, new sidewall treatments to lengthen the life of the cotton casing. No detail is too small to keep Nieuwhuis from tweaking the Dugast formula, maintaining all the time the essence of what created the Dugast legend in the first place.

Only for the world champ. Check these out. I can't quite see the tread pattern but they look like Rhinos. Frankly, I'm more interested to learn how well those Dura Ace carbons are holding out. Apparently bomber.