Last week someone raised a query about the provenance of NERVOR steering columns which tend to crop up with great frequency on some top-end French frames. I know that both my blue-with-yellow-lugs Peugeots PX10s from the early and mid 50s have them, as do several Merciers.
The columns were made by the same company that made Nervex lugs. However in the 50s the lugs were made by the parent company Francolam, based in ST Etienne, but later on the company moved slightly up country to the Massif Central, to Yssingeaux, where it traded under the name of Aime Dubois. The company still made Nervex lugs, but also had a wider trade in seat and chainstays, fork blades, seat pillars and threaded steering columns.
It seems to me pretty certain that these columns were not made from a chrome-moly/chrome-manganese steel..unless it was very thin-walled, because they had a tendency to bulge out very easily at the point where the wedge at the bottom of the handdlebar stem's quill tightend up. But I have a strange theory..impossible to prove it..that althought the columns were quite strong enough for all purposes, they would crumble and bend more easily on impact, and thereby save the down and top tubes of the frame from creasing up. All my top quality frames with these types of columns also, noticeably, have the hardwood "bung" introduced through the fork crown and into the fork column. Just a thought that's all...
There was, until the French component industry was virtually eclipsed in the late 80s/early 90s, another company called LG, based in Noiretable, not far from St Etienne, that also made stays, columns, fork crowns, and drop-outs, but not lugs.
It was something of a norm in the French cycle industry to produce ranges of bikes with the three main tubes in Reynolds, but with the rest in another band. Even in the 80s many French builders were building main triangles in Reynolds and brazing in Vitus stays and forks..or occasionally Camus stays and forks from AMR, as this company was one of the first to produce ranges with aero-profiles.
I think it was Fred Raednor who commented that I would also know the name of the wife of the manufacturer of Nervor columns..yes, Fred..she was called Marianne.
Norris Lockley..Settle UK