I don't know if the Ideale was CP titanium or not. The Teledyne Titan, of which I have one, was CP Ti, which was blamed for them cracking, although t he cracking was mostly of the forks. But IIRC, the Titan was introduced in 1974, so by 1977, maybe Ideale were using Ti alloy. Strangely, modern Ti frames, though now made of much stronger Ti alloys, still seem to mostly us e carbon forks.
Since I really just learned of the existance of these Ti railed Ideales, I have no clue if they had problems with rail failure or not or whether they used CP or alloyed titanium. Anyone else know? I have no recollection at all of these saddles In The Day, but then, that was the time of the superli ghtweight craze, with lots of drilled and milled components and lots of nov el materials applications, some successful, some disasters. So I guess it was easy for one component to get lost in the noise, even one that now in r estrospect seems to have been an important innovation.
Regards,
Jerry Moos
> From: Mark Ritz <ritzmon@sbcglobal.net>
\r?\n> Subject: Re: [CR] On Topic Ti railed Ideale
\r?\n> To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
\r?\n> Date: Monday, February 16, 2009, 3:13 PM
\r?\n> Jery Moos postulates:
\r?\n> snip< One wonders why the Ti Ideale is so little known
\r?\n> today, and indeed
\r?\n> I don't remember it getting a lot of notice In The
\r?\n> Day. Perhaps the tim
\r?\n> e was simply not right, as the newer plastic saddles were
\r?\n> in vogue, and tra
\r?\n> ditional leather saddles were coming to be thought of a old
\r?\n> fashioned, Ti r
\r?\n> ails or not. As we have seen from this past thread, a Ti
\r?\n> railed leather
\r?\n> saddle can be made about the same weight as a plastic
\r?\n> saddle with steel rai
\r?\n> ls, but not much lighter. And I would imagine that, Ti
\r?\n> still being prett
\r?\n> y exotic in 1977, the Ti Ideale was quite expensive,
\r?\n> probably several times
\r?\n> more than a Cinelli Unicanitor of the same weight. So
\r?\n> maybe Brooks just
\r?\n> waited until a market for leather saddles had been
\r?\n> established again, this
\r?\n> time more of a niche market, and one that they thought
\r?\n> would support a hig
\r?\n> h priced "luxury" product.> end snip
\r?\n>
\r?\n> My guess is that the titanium available at the time (mostly
\r?\n> CP or commercia
\r?\n> lly pure) was not suitable for saddle undercarriages. I
\r?\n> remember a numbe
\r?\n> r of early Ti and AL carriages breaking in the 70s. Newer
\r?\n> alloys of tita
\r?\n> nium are much, much stronger than CP. A simple case of
\r?\n> innovation before
\r?\n> its time. Our industry is full of examples - anatomical
\r?\n> saddles and ful
\r?\n> l suspension, for example, were available before 1900, but
\r?\n> had to wait to
\r?\n> be re-introduced as "the latest innovation" when
\r?\n> materials and constructio
\r?\n> n methods caught up with ideas. The ideas, in most cases,
\r?\n> were not "stol
\r?\n> en" so much as forgotten and re-discovered. Remember
\r?\n> the quote from awhi
\r?\n> le ago that said (and I para-phrase) if steel didn't
\r?\n> have such a long histo
\r?\n> ry, it would be heralded as the new wonder material for
\r?\n> bicycles.
\r?\n>
\r?\n> Cheers,
\r?\n> Mark Ritz
\r?\n> Rainy Arcata, CA, USA
\r?\n> http://www.kinetic-koffee.com
\r?\n> ritzmon.blogspot.com