RE: [CR]Bicycling Article on small Frame builders

(Example: Framebuilding:Paint)

content-class: urn:content-classes:message
Subject: RE: [CR]Bicycling Article on small Frame builders
Date: Fri, 16 May 2003 09:31:34 -0400
Thread-Topic: [CR]Bicycling Article on small Frame builders
Thread-Index: AcMbph4hio4m4jgDRzuBZy2qr4UZXAAB7PTQ
From: "Bingham, Wayne R." <WBINGHAM@imf.org>
To: <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org>


Ann wrote:
>>>I've got a copy of "Bicycling" from November 1975 that has an article

titled "American Frame builders - Who's doing what?" that lists a few people I've never heard of, and has a GREAT picture of Matt Assenmacher,

holding up one of his finished road bikes.

Remember these names? ... Theodore De Capiteau...<<<<

Ted's name came up back in February. Since Ted was a local Falls Church boy, and I knew him back when, I looked him up for the story. The following is what I posted at the time (PS - Ann - I'd love to have a copy of the article):

Well, I scrounged up the phone number and spoke with Ted DeCapiteau last night. He's healthy and happy, and was quite surprised that anyone remembered him or his frames. This is a brief history according to Ted.

Ted started building frames shortly after he opened Papillon Cycles in 1976. He said that he started building because he thought no one was addressing cyclist's particular requirements, especially his own, which was for touring. He saw a need in the cycling community and sought to fulfill it. (While searching out Ted's phone number, I learned from a mutual acquaintance that Ted was an industrial arts teacher before he went into the bike business.)

Ted estimates that he only built about a dozen or so frames, all custom order. Most of them were built between '76 and '82, when he moved the shop to it's present location in Arlington. The building in Falls Church that housed the original shop was torn down to make way for the Rt. 66 extension. At the original location, Bailey was Ted's shop manager and apprentice. Bailey learned to build frames from Ted, and may have continued to built a few after Ted's departure. Ted said he learned how to build frames by copying everything Albert Eisentraut did.

Most of Ted's frames were built with Prugnat lugs, Cinelli semi-sloping crowns and BBs, although the touring frames he and his wife still have were built with Nervex Pro lugs. Ted freely mixed tubes, mostly Columbus SL/SP and Reynolds 531, to get the characteristics he wanted for each particular frame. For the most part, all frames were also painted by Ted, and had no markings or frame material stickers whatsoever. However, Ted does recall one frame he built being painted by someone else who fabricated DeCapiteau down-tube decals for it. Several of the frames Ted built were road-going fixed-gear bikes for DC messengers, something Ted says no one else was doing at the time. That may have been a specialty that Bailey continued for a while.

Around the time of the move to the new shop, Ted bought a sailboat and started spending more time sailing and less time building frames or at the shop. He finally sold the shop to Bailey in 1989 and started building his house on Virginia's Potomac shore, where he lives today.

Wayne Bingham
Falls Church VA