Dear friends,
Chuck and I have arrived at what the actual form of the Friday "framebuilding" portion of Velo Rendezvous will entail. Chuck said it best, "tell them it will be a Love Fest". OK then, it will be a framebuilders love fest, meaning that any and all framebuilders (pro or am) are invited to join us in the picnic area by the venue at the Rose Bowl midday for a simposium style discussion of "Framebuilding in the 70's" along with any other classic oriented framebuilding topics. ANYONE that is in town Fri. for Velo Rendezvous is welcome to listen or participate with questions or comments as well. The objective will be for us th share our love for the classics and the techniques used to produce them. There will be no reason for anyone to feel intimidated or unwelcome. We will take a ride afterwards. I plan on riding my Jackson Trike with the "Ben Hur" hubs; so bring your best armour plated wheels if you plan to join us afterwards.
I will bring the "ground floor" stages of my "AeroTour" project so that other builders and interested parties can see how I am going about this new endevor. I will bring my first full scale drawing and the ammended drawing to illistrate what and how slight changes are made as neccessary to end up with the plan for the actual bike. I will bring the raw materials and possibly some sup-assemblies, sketches, and ideas related to the planning of this bike. You will see the project in it's earliest stages; hopefully as an appitizer for next year when I introduce the bike rendered in steel, silver braze, and Imron.
I would especially like to encourage other framebuilders to attend if possible and share with us some of your experiences and techniques. I will do what I can to help anyone along with particular framebuilding techniques that many who are making handmade bikes could use some guideance on; in particular handmade seat stay caps. This very important part of the frame (aesthetically) is oftentimes neglected and it can really detract from an otherwise fine effort. In "the old days" it was common to say amongst framebuilders that the seat lug/seat stay area was where to look to see how accomplished the framebuilder is. I still like the concept of "a great framebuilder is most evident in his/her track frames". But seat stays tell a tremendous amount about the actual skill of the builder. Gotta see it raw too; painters can easily erase a multitude of sins and inability.
Please join us if you will be in town midday on Fri. for some lunch and a heavy dose of framebuilder talk. The only stipulation during this segment is that there will be NO unauthorized video, audio, or photographic records of this gathering allowed. I will authorize these requests if they come up, under certain conditions. But I will require each person to ask and my reply will be final on the matter. The same stipulation will apply to my presentation on Saturday during the symposium. My topic is "Replica vs. Counterfeit" and I will do my best to clarify the distinction and show some examples of each. Hopefully I will be able to pass along some information that will give everyone the basic tools to recognize frames that have been dealt with in several differant manners for various reasons.
Brian Baylis
La Mesa, CA