Mike,
That would be Joe Starck that was interviewed for Rivendell. Joe appeared in about 1981 or '82 at Masi, a while after the "early years" of Masi in CA. There weren't any Mexican workers at the original Masi factory in Carlsbad. They became involved when the owner of Masi (Roland Sahm) moved the operation from the original building to his "ranch" in Rancho Santa Fe sometime about 1978. A few of the ranch employees were trained to help out Ted Kirkbride and Rob Roberson (primarily Rob) while building frames at the "ranch" location. Eventually the operation was moved to a building in San Marcos and one or two of the workers (Gregorio and Raul) continued to help build frames. That continued thru the time that Joe Starck worked for Masi until sometime in the nineties; don't recall exactly when that dissolved.
None of the Mexican workers took any framebuilding skills to Mexico. Think about it, once established here with families they don't often return to Mexico to work cheap at a job that they were well paid for here. They were not illegal residents in the US in the first place. They were fully competitent craftsmen who learned the skills neccessary for framebuilding (at least their part of it which was filing the frames after brazing and other filing tasks) and worked at it until the Masi operation finally dissapated (in so far as American handmade frames). I don't know what Gregorio and Raul are doing now, but I assure you they are not in Mexico building frames. Hope that clears up that issue.
Brian Baylis
La Mesa, CA
>
> I know I read somewhere that the early days of Masi Cali
> had several Mexican workers doing decal/finish work.
>
> I wonder how many actually took that training to Mexico?
>
> I'm sure Brian can clarify if this is true or not. I do
> not remember the article - I think maybe an interview at
> Rivendell of John Stark...
>
> Mike "Heinz 57" Wilkinson