At 03:47 PM 03/02/2008 -0500, Dr. Paul Williams wrote:
>Following my request for a 22mm quill dia. stem for the Carpenter
>yesterday Harvey Sachs emailed and asked if I was sure that I was
>looking for a 22mm and not a 22.2mm.
>
>Well, yes and no! I would have thought 22.2mm was most likely but not
>so. I have puzzled over this and have measured and remeasured. Unless my
>calipers are way off (unlikely as these are good quality dial calipers -
>graduations to 0.02mm - from Lee Valley Tools) 22mm is right and may
>even be a little tight! The stems I have - Titan and unknown British
>lugged chrome - are both intended for 22.2mm. I have tried a Pivo stem I
>had lying around which measures 21.7 and this fits very comfortably into
>the fork. Now this would make the measurement roughly 7/8" imperial (I
>must get an imperial set of calipers - Lee Valley does the same ones in
>imperial - graduated in thousandths).
>
>I don't particularly want to use the Pivo stem as it is not exactly
>period (and not the most attractive piece) but it would do. However,
>does anyone have a suitable British stem - preferably chromed in 7/8"
>quill diameter?
>
>If not here is the question, was 7/8" common in the 40s - early-50s on
>British framesets and are these available?
7/8" _is_ 22.2mm, so that may not be what you're looking for. According to
Sheldon Brown's site http://sheldonbrown.com/
My Sutherland's 3rd Edition has this:
22.2mm (7/8") England, Belgium, Italy, Japan 22mm Germany, Austria, Denmark, Switzerland 21.9mm France, Spain 21.15mm (.833") Japan (on many bicycles for U.S. market)
Check your steerer tube on the fork. Maybe there's rust or burrs that make it look like it's 22mm and it just needs cleaning up with some emery cloth wrapped around a dowel. A 22.2mm stem may fit after all.
BTW, you can buy decent inck/metric digital calipers these days for very little money. Canadian Tire has them for $35 and they routinely go on sale for half price.
John Betmanis
Woodstock, Ontario
Canada