hi listers , Frank writes of his concern about light or even heavier scratches in the surface of a quill stem , and i will agree that when you are putting these items in a nicely refinished frame set it is only about right to choose your best one, i often emery these superfical scratches out using progressively finer emery paper and finish off with a polish ....you can lacquer a topcoat on these if you so desire.... however i have, as many of you guys have, fought with a frozen stem, in some cases they just will not move, when that happens i cut the stem [so that i can get a local machine shop to machine it out] having first removed the long expander bolt even when cut half way they hang right in there , just try to break it off !! so in most cases i would have little worry over a forged alloy stem breaking, but i am always surprised how many people ride with them way over the minimum insertion mark or with a loose bolt. i am sure that i read in Ron Kitchen's book that the French had some broken stems but that his Milremo copies, although not forged ,had never given any cause for concern , am i right ????, Norris L perhaps you can put your 2d worth on this. WillieCarton ....indian summer again today in COLERAINE N. IRELAND
Jerome & Elizabeth Moos <jerrymoos@sbcglobal.net> wrote: If you worry about light scratches on a stem, you'll never ride a bike. Any stem that is in a steering column almost certainly has gotten some light scratches while being inserted. I've never worried about stuff like this in 35 years of cycling and I'm not about to start now.
Regards,
Jerry Moos
Retrofan531 wrote: Last night (or was it almost 3am this morning?) as I built up a KOF Schwinn Paramount I bought from Robbie Fellows, I was trying to decide which quill stem I was going to use.
I had several to choose from, but as I started looking closer at them I noticed a few of them had some scratches on them. These were stems I had probably bought over the years as lightly used or near new, and other than these scratches they looked like new. These were nice quality stems like 3T, Nitto, etc.
The scratches mainly looked like they might have been caused while in a headtube, because they were going sideways on the stem. None of them looked to be very deep or long, but it got me wondering how much of a scratch is too much.
I know most of the stems have a scored minimum insertion mark, so it must be okay to have some marking in the stem.
Any suggestions on how to know when a scratch on a stem will compromise its integrity...before it snaps while riding? ;-)
Thanks,
Frank Phillips McAlester, OK
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