Well a day that started pretty badly has just got even worse. Merde!
How was a Yorkshireman to know that over there in the States there's an outpost of the Raleigh Appreciation Society, and one that's pretty outspoken as well. so I'll extend my humble apologies to Peter and Raoul if my email about the bog standard Phillips touched a raw nerve or two. But I think I did in a way sort of praise the flam orange paint job.
This morning had the weather not been so appallingly wet I was due to head South along the congested motorways to attend a cycle jumble at the Harvey Haddon Stadium, on the outskirts of the fair city of Nottingham, where at lunchtime I would have had a few beers with some of the members of the Broad Oak Cycling Club- think that's the one - the only cycling club in the UK named after a beerhouse, some of those members having, been, once upon a time in th glory days of Raleigh, fitters and engineers in the works on Lenton Boulevard.
The trouble with British folk is that we grow up with Raleighs, right from the wonderful first tricycle they used to make, and I suppose that familiarity does breed some form of, not contempt, but lack of appreciation. The point of my email was simply to draw the attention of any CR List members to the fact that the Phillips was not allit might appear to be. The Birmingham-made Phillips before raleigh took the form over, were well-brazed up machines on the whole fitted out with a range of Phillips equipment. Raleigh simply downgraded the marque.
Stephen Banner's reminiscences about working on these frames in the bikeshop reminded me of a packet of "bronze slugs" that I have somewhere in the workshop. These were given to me during a visit to Carlton's workshops at Worksop, after the TI takeover. The sslugs are quite large chunks of brazing material guillotined off the end of a bar. These were put inside the frame tubes as near the lug-to-tubes joints as possible, and after ensuring that there was enough flux to go round, the frames were furnace-brazed in batches. I think Raleigh also experimented also with "induction brazing(?) Given an even temperature at all the joints the slugs would melt and flow through the joints from the inside to the outside. Sometimes. as we know the brazing material didn't quite make it!
I can appreciate that these slugs might hold some special attraction to the Raleigh fan club, so I am thinking of casting them in clear polyester resin and turning them into the ultimate paperweights.
I also have at least six of the Raleigh/Phillips/Hercules/Triumph True Temper frames hanging up somewhere - all looking worse for use BUT nonetheless still servicable.roblem is that they are all 19.5 -21" with those long top-tubes but I am willing to offer them FREEEEEE to anyone who wants them and is willing to pay the carriage! Sorry no 58 or 60cms!
Once again, sorry folks.. no offence ment.
Noris Lockley