I really didn't want to add to this thread, but it is just wrong to think there is any real bias here against fillet brazed frames. A long time reading of the CR list will show there's always been a very natural appreciation for fillet brazed frames, both classic and KOF. I have a coupl e myself, both classic on-topic fillet brazed frames. What people are hearing on the list is a pronounced emphasis on appreciating lugged frames, especially in a KOF context, probably because lugged frames fell away prett y suddenly from being the vast majority of all lightweights produced to being a tiny tiny minority--so that you'd never see a lugged frame in a list of available product in a mainstream cycling magazine for example. That's the reason that KOF lugged frames get discussed.
So the KOF category as I read it in the rules and in the culture of the CR list is not about admiring whatever is being done by creative hand-builders (which could include beautiful work with lots of various frame materials an d joining methods). Instead the KOF category is just about recognizing curren t builders that are continuing a tradition of joining/building method that used to be in the majority and now is in the extreme minority, a kind of frame that people on the CR list are concerned to see continue to be built. Even CR participants who might prefer fillet brazed fames over lugge d frames, both classic and contemporary, are going to be concerned to see hig h quality lugged frames continue in the market. As special as fillet brazed frames are today, they were always special, more than lugged frames in the sense that they were so much more rare. They were a rarity (rarified) then and they are a rarity now, and because of the nature of the building method they are not likely to go anywhere. Someone brought up Schwinn and it was Schwinn that made this point back in the day by keeping the rarely ordered Superior model in the catalog year after year if only to point out that lugs weren't the only quality way to join tubes, and to suggest by the model name how Schwinn might rate fillet brazed frames.
The real debate in KOF discussions is how much hand work (vs. machining/production) is required to qualify (whether lugged or fillet brazed). I'm broadminded on this issue--glad that hand skills survive in th e market but also glad that lugged frames get built at various levels of quality and price.
I hope that the mention of Merlin bikes that seemed to start this thread referred to the classic lugged steel Merlin marque made in Britain. If we have to begin discussing contemporary welded titanium like the current famous ti Merlins and/or carbon fibre just because some of the tubes may be joined by hand with great skill, then I think we miss the point of the CR list. Just because a Teledyne Titan or Speedwell or Graftek may be on-topic does not make a handmade welded titanium frame or hand layed up carbon fram e a KOF.
Mitch Harris London, UK
On 12/2/05, Syke - Deranged Few M/C <sykerocker@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Why are we so biased against non-lugged frames? I can venture a one-word
> guess that probably answers that question:
>
> Schwinn
>
> C'mon, thirty-forty years ago, a REAL lover of bicycles rode something
> made in Europe with a lugged frame. The mass-market, non-cognescenti (sp
?)
> who knew nothing about bicycles and wouldn't appreciate them if they did
> rode Schwinn's (or worse, Columbias, Murrays, Huffys, etc.).
>
> Big heavy well-constructed bikes that had absolutely no snob value, no
> ability to show that you were something special out there cranking down t
he
> road. Yeah, I know, they're welded frames, not brazed - the bias continu
es
> anyway, even if just in the back of our minds. How often do you read the
> discussion of anything Schwinn, unless the word Paramount is automaticall
y
> attached?
>
> George R. "Syke" Paczolt
> Montpelier, VA
>
> classicrendezvous-request@bikelist.org wrote:
> Date: Fri, 02 Dec 2005 00:50:56 +0000
> From: hersefan@comcast.net
> To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
> Subject: Re: [CR]LUGGED FRAMES VERUS FILLET BRAZED FRAMES
> Message-ID: <
> 120220050050.9696.438F9A700004FC60000025E02206424613020E000A9C9D0A08@comc
ast.net
> >
> Content-Type: text/plain
> MIME-Version: 1.0
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> Message: 1
>
> Many of the best vintage lightweights were lugless. Alex Singer, Herse,
> Routans, all did gorgeous lugless frames. They were lighter and very soug
ht
> after, especially in the 40's and 50's.
>
> And don't forget Reyhand - the one that got it right first. Gorgeous
> Fillet brazing.
>
> Oh - and that Bill Hurlow guy accross the channel did some fabulous fille
t
> brazed frames as well.
>
> And the gorgeous fillet brazed frame that Kurt Goodrich did a year or so
> ago.
>
> Why do we like lugs so much anyway?
> (maybe cause a silver brazed luged frame construction is sooo much more
> gentle on the pre-air hardened steel perhaps?)
>
> Mike Kone in Boulder CO
>
>
> Syke
> Deranged Few M/C
>
> "I think, therefore, I am neither Republican, nor Democrat, just
> unpopular." ---anon
>
> "The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in hi
s
> hand and it's good-bye to the Bill of Rights." ---H. L. Mencken
>
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