On Tuesday, September 10, 2019 at 8:28:09 PM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 9/10/2019 6:48 PM, Tom Kunich wrote:
On Sunday, September 8, 2019 at 1:09:54 PM UTC-7, Sir Ridesalot wrote:

I can stop my FULLY LOADED cantilever brake touring bike or my cantilever equipped MTB very well in the dry or in the wet. Indeed the limiting factor of braking with my cantilever brakes isn't the stopping power of the brakes but is the road surface. On many roads and trails my tires will start sliding because the cantilever brakes are capable of locking them up.

Cheers

Well, I have a touring bike and two gravel bikes with cantilevers. I don't ride very hard of the touring bike so it can stop. But on the gravel bikes I switched one to high end V-brakes and the other to hydraulic disks. Coming down steep descents a cantilever required the arm strength of a gorilla.

It could have been your setup, or your choice of brake shoes. As Sheldon
and others have pointed out, one can adjust the mechanical advantage of
many cantilever brakes. Those on our tandem are set up for higher
braking force, by shortening the straddle cable. The tradeoff is less
travel, just as the laws of physics predict, so I have to be sure the
wheels are true. But except for one loaded tour, that hasn't been a
problem.

On that tour, after some serious potholes in one town, the rear wheel
was a bit out of true despite its 48 spokes. Unfortunately, with the
wheel so far back and surrounded by panniers, I couldn't hear the scraping.

I wondered why I felt so blasted tired on the last two days of that
trip. When I got the bike in my basement, I realized the answer.



--
- Frank Krygowski

Frank, contrary to your opposing beliefs I am quite familiar with leverage.