This brings up an interesting point. As we were all standing around before the San Diego Vintage ride this weekend, Peter Johnson was showing off his latest frame, not yet in paint. It was very lovely, with highly finished and thinned lugs practically blending right into the frame.
There seems to be at least two schools of thought on this. Phil Brown was admiring the frame, as I recall, and mentioned that he liked more of a lug-line on the frames he builds. Someone else (I forget who), noted that Eisentraut was famous for his blended lugs, a look I always kinda liked actually, but which seems--if not anathema--at least, not desirable, among certain builders. I know Chris Kvale does this very nicely--his lugged frames remind me of the old 70s Eisentraut custom frames.
On the other hand, Mario Confente seems to have walked a line right down the middle, with lugs that were thinned and nicely finished, but had a lot more profile than, say, an Eisentraut of the same period.
Seems like that blended-lug look is purely a custom feature: nobody has time to do that in a production setting, although, that said, two early Colnagos I'm lucky enough to have both have heavily thinned and blended lugs, a look that slowly disappeared from Ernesto's production frames as time, and volume, marched on.
Then there was Pogliaghi, who appears to have barely touched a file to his lugs (they were all stamped and formed lugs, so probably not much filing was really needed, except to get rid of the brazing line down the middle..) and it's a look I like, at least on a Pogi: sorta macho, ya know? Somehow appropriate from a builder of big-time track frames.
I must confess to being slightly taken aback when I got my Rivendell and saw how much profile the lugs have. Beautifully finished off, but hardly thinned at all. Must be Grant's idea of a correct look. I guess I'll always associate thinned and blended lugs with the highest quality...
Charles Andrews
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jerry & Liz Moos [mailto:moos@penn.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2001 6:02 PM
> To: Steven L. Sheffield
> Cc: Classic Rendezvous
> Subject: Re: [CR]Number 2?
>
>
> Well, Mario may have been worshiped in California, but in my
> part of the US in
> the 70's (Ohio in the early 70's, Arkansas in the late 70's)
> I would say Albert
> Eisentraut was much better known. In fact, I'd say
> Eisentraut was probably the
> first US framebuilder since WWII to become well known among US biking
> enthusiasts generally, as opposed to among fellow
> framebuilders. That isn't to
> say he was necessarily better than Mario, but he certainly
> was/is no slouch.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jerry Moos
>
> Steven L. Sheffield wrote:
>
> > So ... if we are all agreed that Mario Confente was the
> best builder in the
> > United States in the 1970s ...
> >
> > Who is number 2, and for whom does he work?
> >
> > Or are we even agreed that Mario is number 1?
> >
> > If you could have a bike built by each of the top three
> builders, who would
> > they be? In order?
> >
> > --
> >
> > Steven L. Sheffield
> > stevens at veloworks dot com
> > veloworks at earthlink dot net
> > aitch tee tea pea colon [for word] slash [four ward] slash
> double-you
> > double-yew double-ewe dot veloworks dot com [four word] slash