Steel boost 29er for Washington state

Maybe 2021 will be the year of the 29er for me in my shop. I doubt that the MTB numbers will catch up with the gravel/CX numbers but there seems to be a bit of a trend here- 148 spacing and room for 2.6 tires. These features are paired with a rather steep (76 deg.) seat tube and a pretty slack (65 deg.) head tube. I have only ridden one bike like this and I didn't get a chance to really test it in the dirt but this formula is what people are asking for right now. 

A 29x2.6 tire will just fit in the back. I had to increase the length of the seat stays to make the tire fit. What I mean by that is that I actually had to add material to a tube that would have been too short. I'm going to ask the importer to spec a longer tube for future builds as I doubt that this style of frame is going away any time soon. If anything, frames like this will continue getting more extreme with larger tires and slacker front ends. 

Some of the tubing on this frame is Velo-Spec. This is a brand created by Fairing industrial when they bought up all of True Temper's old steel. Fairing shipped the steel to Taiwan where it was drawn into butted heat treated tubes and then shipped it back here. This steel has a bigger carbon footprint than some but the quality of the metal is so high that it is worth the trouble. I'm anxious to see what other tubes they come up with later this year.