Brandon- Your statements on craftsmanship INTEGRITY speak well. Am I a bad person because I think your essay could very well be titled "There's no better build under the paint than a Joe Starck-built Trek, Masi, Fuso, Bill Holland, Rivendell or Starck circa 1979-2002"? Joe Starck Bicycles, Sun Praire, Wisconsin
Brandon Ives <monkeylad@mac.com> wrote: I find Nervex Professional lugs BORING? There were some wonderful bikes made with built with them, but 90% of the bikes built with them was for flash. It's like the production managers said if we use these "fancy" lugs it'll take people attention away from the sloppy workmanship of the rest of the frame. This is something I've noticed over the years and it's been discussed before on the list, most people only see the paint and lugs. I've watched lots of knowledgeable folks look into bottom brackets and if they see a mitered DT and ST they're happy. They're missing about 10 other things to look at to get an idea of the quality of the build. The same goes with dropouts. Most folks will look and see Campagnolo dropouts and they think great. Anybody can buy Campy DOs, even today, but few folks actually do the very important step of finishing the DOs. If the dropouts still have casting seams I walk away.
I assure everyone I could build a frame from gas pipe, unmitered tubes, half-brazed joints, and poor geometry finish it with a flashy paint job and chrome, thinned fancy lugs and most folks would say "WOW!" when they looked at it. That is until you try to pick up the 8 lb. frame or ride it and the DT comes out the the BB. Learning to look beneath the skin, or paint as the case may be, is something that takes quite a while to learn. It's well worth learning how to do it and will save you lots of money and heartache in the future. Alas, to learn you need to look very closely at hundreds, maybe thousands, of frames and be very critical of any flaw. Just because some big name builder or factory made doesn't mean much. I know of one very famous builder (not on the list and I'm not telling who) who had an alcoholic phase in the late 70s and the quality dropped substantially. I would have no problems buying any of his frames before or after this period, but frames from this period had awful quality control, though they still looked flash on the outside. Even I have slopped somethings together just to get it done. You should see the canti-bosses on one of my bikes I built up for a prototype, though I would never let the frame go public.
Anyway, as the song say's, "Don't believe the hype." Oh and beauty is much more than skin deep. ciao, Brandon"monkeyman"Ives Santa Barbara, Calif.
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