Mark,
I watched the Colnago video and it is indeed Ernesto himself describing everything. What he says in Italian is exactly what the English voiceover says, pure marketing blather.
I have been to De Rosa's place many times over the last 15 years and no, they do not have a carousel like the one used by Colnago. They do use a preheater but it is much different and is perhaps less sophisticated because devoid of the timing element that you speak of. The temperature of these preheaters can however be quite readily regulated and are more precise than manually heating for anybody except the most experienced people with a torch. I have seen hundreds of De Rosa's without paint and my experience does not mirror yours. I have found that the large majority are very well finished. Granted there is a difference between one brazer and another, but that occurs almost everywhere unless it is a one-man show. They do not do their own painting or plating. The fellows that work there usually have begun at 14 years of age as apprentices (Up until a few years ago, in Italy it was only necessary for children to go for obligatory schooling until 14. Now they have joined the rest of Europe with 16 being the necessary age for compulsory attendance.) and tend to stay for a long time. Some of the faces have been there for more than 15 years and are highly prized workers by the De Rosa family. There are also 3 members of the De Rosa family brazing and/or checking every frame that goes out. Whereas Colnago claims 15 thousand frames and 10 thousand forks a year from his Cambiago plant, De Rosa speaks of perhaps 3000 from his Cusano Milanino shop (the two towns are almost one next to the other in the industrial area North of Milan.). Colnago therefore would need to check 75 frames per day to be up to speed on bikes bearing his name. At De Rosa, with three of the family doing the QC, and a lower volume, the number is closer to 5 per person per day. It is obvious that the one is possible whereas the other is not. At present, Ugo is personally responsible for 100% of the quality control of the titanium frames, having made more than half of them himself. All you need to do to verify this is to check Ugo's hands and then compare them to Ernesto's.
One last point regarding the robotized production line. When I worked with Miyata in the early 80's, I was shown a frame by one of the people who had gone on a factory tour in Japan. The frame came straight off the production line (with only the excess flux cleaned up) and there was absolutely no need to file anything and the brass came flush to the edge of the lugs and inside the BB. That was a fully robotized production and the tubes showed absolutely no discoloration from overheating.
Steven Maasland
Moorestown, NJ
> By the 80s (I think) De Rosas were probably brazed on a carousel, an
> infernal, horrible torture device with humans strapped to it. Most all
> larger lugged steel frame producers went to those, I'm not singling out
> DeRosa. Joints to be brazed are heated by fixed torches and come to the
> human already hot, probably too hot, and the human has to finish the joint
> in the time allotted, because the carousel will move on whether it is done
> or not.
>
> I saw only two DeRosas from this period with the paint off. Both had
almost
> fully one half of the seat lug utterly unbrazed, as far as I could tell
from
> the outside (i.e. without cutting the frame in half). Maybe just a
> coincidence; a sample size of two is too small to say much with
confidence,
> but it's hard for me to imagine this happening even once on a frame brazed
> by a human who wasn't tied to a carousel.
>
> Carousels are incredibly noisy, with all those giant rosebud torches
> roaring, and of course awfully smoky and hot, and so the kind of workers
> you'll get who are willing to work under those conditions are not your
> sensitive creative types. More likely typical factory workers who work
> there because they couldn't find or keep a better job. I know that's a
> terrible thing to say especially because of the exceptions, the wonderful
> people with passion for bicycles who no doubt had their reasons for
working
> there. But there has to be a tendency for the more artistic types to stay
> away from such an atmosphere.
>
> Bill Davidson was flirting with the idea of buying a carousel during the
> time I worked there, probably a Taiwanese copy of the Italian ones, or
maybe
> making his own. We went so far as to build a BB shell pre-warming station
> with 6 or 8 propane/oxygen torches aimed at the shell. The torches were
on
> a little trolley that was rolled back and forth continuously by an
electric
> motor, to give a "waving" effect similar to what a human would do.
(Spreads
> the heat avoiding localized hot spots, and helps prevent the flame blowing
> big chunks of the paste flux off) It worked great, incredibly fast, but
we
> all hated it so much and more or less threatened to walk off the job if we
> had to use it. Multiply that by four for a full frame carousel.
>
> I have a video of the Colnago carousel, with some Italian dude (Ernesto, I
> guess - someone here will know) expounding on why it is so wonderful. I
> don't speak Italian, and I'm hoping that what he really said isn't quite
as
> ridiculous as the English voice-over translation, because much of what
they
> have him saying is the most fantastic claptrap. Like how their frames
never
> break because they age the tubing until all the molecules settle down
before
> using it in a frame. And how straight forks absorb all the road
vibration,
> while curved forks can't because the curve is rigid.
>
> The video can be downloaded from
> http://bulgier.net/
>
> It is 17MB, kinda big if you have a modem; maybe only for you lucky
> broadband users. Right-click and chose "Save Target As..." (MSIE users -
> probably similar in other browsers) so that it doesn't try to open it in
> your browser. My bandwidth won't allow this one to "stream" to you even
if
> yours does.
>
> Mark Bulgier
> Seattle, Wa
> USA
> _______________________________________________
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