Yes I do still have copies of my book Ease with Elegance - The Story of Thanet Cycles. They are $10 each plus $3 shipping. It looks Dale as if you didn't get my reply to Mark. In case others did not too here it is:
The early Thanet Silverlights had a high failure rate - they were built
lugless and the problem was not generally the joints coming apart but the
tubes tearing close to the fillet. Within about a year most joints were
given either lugs or some reinforcements and most of the problems with
broken frames disappeared. The top tube/seat tube area remained practically
lugless for all Silverlights - there was just a shaped reinforcement on the
back of the seat tube around the slit. However Silverlights were always less
reliable than a conventional frame.
This was not due to either the silver brazing - incidentally they used
an Easyflo rod mostly - or poor workmanship but the design. The bottom
bracket design whilst looking interesting was definitely not a help - a
contemporary engineer wrote: If any constructional draughtsman showed such
a construction on his drawing board, his dismissal would follow soon
afterwards. A main principle is to keep away from secondary stresses. Thus
the centre lines of converging components must meet at one point. This is
the case with a normal crank bracket. With the Thanet every tube is off set
from the bracket and so there is severe bending stress where the tubes are
tangent to the bracket. ¹ Additionally the chainstays are considerably more
slender than conventional ones.
All three main tubes were 1in in diameter and both the down tube and
seat tube in the thin gauges used were overstressed as a result. The gauges
used were very similar to standard 531 db tubing - 0.5/0.8.
In the early days 531 was used exclusively but from 1951 on Accles and
Pollocks Kromo tubing was also used. I have never seen a spec for Kromo but
am sure it was a fairly typical chrome-moly steel alloy. At the time Thanets
found that Kromo made for a more reliable frame; however in hindsight using
the frame build records that exist and the surviving frames it is easy to
see that Reynolds 531 frames have proved to be nearly 50% more reliable in
the long term.
However the building of Thanet Silverlights did not stop due to frame
reliability problems but due to a big downturn in the cycle market. Petrol
rationing (after WWII!) at long last finished in late 1953 and all
lightweight framebuilders experienced a very sudden decline in orders. Bates
closed most of their shops almost immediately and a year later were left
with one shop, Hetchins rapidly cut frame production which then declined
every year until the middle 60s. Thanet were in a similar position. It was
not helped however by the fact that Eddie Oliver, Thanet's framebuilder at
the time left to become a milkman - he could make more money that way! Frame
production was transferred to Rotrax at Southampton but only a few
Silverlight frames were made there - probably less than 30 - unfortunately
the records from this period have been lost.
> In a message dated 11/29/2001 12:06:10 AM Eastern Standard Time,
> mark@bulgier.net writes:
>
> << Thanet Silverlights were pulled from the market due to a high rate of
> failure, and the brazer's in that workshop were excellent." -His point being
> that silver fillet brazing is too dangerous, if even excellent brazers
> couldn't make 'em safe.
Dale Brown wrote:>
> Is this true? Any Thanet experts want to comment? >>
>
> I have read Hilary's book (Plug! I recommend it highly.. Do you still have
> copies for sale, Hilary?) ) and after my studying these bikes at a distance,
> I think there were perhaps flaws from a design point of view that might have
> lead to failure... Still, they were fascinating and desirable bikes!