At 6:00 PM -0700 3/29/10, John Ferguson wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>I currently have a brazed Singer from around the mid to late 1940s.
>Does anyone know when and why Singer switched from brazed
>construction to lugged construction? Were both styles made
>simultaneously? Anyone know Singer's rationale for switching?
Many of the late 1940s Alex Singers were fillet-brazed. According to Ernest Csuka (see interview Vintage Bicycle Quarterly Vol. 1, No. 1), this was in part a fashion. Fillet-brazing was new in France then. I suspect that the technical trials had an influence, too. To make superlight bikes, you had to fillet-braze to eliminate the weight of the lugs. And with the bike from the Technical Trials in the shop window, many customers probably wanted "one like that." Of course, they couldn't get all the modified components, but the fillet-brazing was easy to do.
By the late 1940s, it appears that the fillet-brazed model was a little less expensive than the lugged ones.
In any case, both were available, and I have seen very, very early Singers (1941) with lugs. By the mid-1950s, almost all Singers had lugs, but of course, they may be exceptions.
Jan Heine
Editor
Bicycle Quarterly
2116 Western Ave.
Seattle WA 98121
http://www.vintagebicyclepress.com