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Fitting a brand new (eeek!) fork to a medium Giant Trance for the first time. Head tube length is 127mm.
Would consider maybe using the fork in a Yeti ASR-5 one day, which apparently has a 114mm head tube... Shorter - so that's not a worry! 😛
I'm thinking if I start off by cutting the steerer at 220mm I shouldn't end up completely hoofing this up.
Any ideas? Does 220mm sound about right? 😕
Id go for 60mm longer than you need now (HT incl headset stack height) . Just in case. 20mm of spacers isnt going to get you busted by the style police! 🙂
Why not test fit it and see?
i think the most your supposed to have is 30mm spacers so add your stack height, stem height etc to that and then ride it and see. that way you can play about with the correct height before making the final cut
Overall height/length of steerer = headset, 25mmish of spacers and then stem.
Add another 10mm (of spacers) to start with on the initial cut and test ride.
Ignore the style police for running spacers above the stem as you need to fettle the stem position. [i]20+ mm of spacers is a no no though....
[/i] 😉
Also it's sometimes worth running an additional 5mm of extra spacers to take into account differences in stems and headset heights. Unless you can guarantee you'll use the same models each time a bit of excess can help with future upgrades.
Assemble the headset, stem, spacers etc on the bike, as if you were building it properly, and puch it all together. Mark the steerer at the top of where this lot comes to, cut 3-4mm below that.
That said, I wouldn't cut a steerer to less than 200mm....
Could you leave the steerer about 260mm long, decide you don't like the forks and sell them to me at a vastly reduced discount? 
That said, I wouldn't cut a steerer to less than 200mm....
Under 180mm seems harder to sell secondhand, 200mm leaves masses of steerer on shorter HT frames.
Personaly I go for frame+headset+stem+20mm, which usualy comes arround 180mm and allows some adjustment.
as long as possible so you can resell or swap to another bike I think i have about 30 mm above my stem iirc.