Chuck Schmidt wrote:
> Thomas Rawson wrote:
> >
> > (cut) Like to know more about Glenn Erickson
> > and Mark Bulgier's work. Any sources of pictures for theirs?
>
> I can help you with Glenn:
> http://www.sandsmachine.com/
As you will see on that site, Glen specializes in lugs, some of the world's
most amazing and beautiful (the pictures don't do 'em justice). He does
have quite a nice touch with fillets too though, and makes a fair number of
fillet brazed tandems.
>
> Mark was with Ti Cycles. I think he's longer there?
> http://www.ticycles.com/
When I was there I was longer, Dave was the shorter one. Now I'm NO longer there. ;) Ti Cycles was one of the places I worked but I did almost no fillet brazed steel there. For the first 17 years of my brilliant framebuilding career (movie title reference) I specialized in fillet brazed. (Made lugged frames too everywhere I worked, even at Santana, but they were less than half of my output.) For about the last 5 or so years of that period I was getting a bit tired (literally) of the filing and sanding, and so offered smoothed fillets as an expensive extra-cost option. When customers saw samples of the unfiled fillets, they usually couldn't tell the difference, and so most wisely opted to save the money. Since I sorta hated the smoothing, this was a strong incentive for me to lay down the fillets extra nice.
Interestingly the best fillets are laid down the quickest too - going slowly, as a beginner does, and especially going back and remelting parts one is not happy with, results in "boiled", porous fillets, more distortion of the steel, and generally not as nice looking as fillets laid down quickly. Of course laying them down perfect *and* quickly is not generally achieved in one's first year of building, but most will get there with enough repetition if they pay attention.
It was nice of Curt G to put me on his short list of filletantes, but I wonder if he's seen the work of as many other builders as I have. Shafer/Salsa, Ritchey, Slawta/Landshark, Melton, Tesch, Lippy, Lyon (no, not "Lippy the Lion"!), Curtlo, the above mentioned Erickson and Goodrich are just some of the American fillet brazed frames I have seen with the paint off; in many cases I watched the guy lay 'em down. All of them did better work on their worst day than the best ever Herse or Taylor - no offense to those great marques, they just weren't as finicky as us Yanks.
Mark Bulgier
Seattle, Wa
USA