All this lug talk the last few days/weeks has been great -- Richie's new must-have set, Kirk's fab blanks (the mind boggles), the coming archive, and the fascinating Hetchins history (thanks for that!!) -- I feel like Mel Brooks, "Lugs, lugs, lugs, that's all we do around here..."
I've heard, um, talk about a lug renaissance, or a mini-boom or whatever, possibly being aided and abetted by the woefully off-topic but nevertheless fellow-traveling carbon tube/titanium lug bikes (not to mention at least one carbon-lugged/titanium-tubed frame--whazzupwitdat?), but does it seem like lugs are making something of a comeback? I know this is choir practice, but the drooling "this could be on your next bike" with the shot of Richie's lug makes me wonder if there's a growing sense of the value (or even cachet, if that's how they see it) of lugged steel among the tigged masses?
One can only hope. Anyway, it sure seems like there's a buncha nice lugs around these days ...
Dennis Ryan Louisville, KY Didn't carry his bike up no damn fool muddy hill today, like he did Wednesday ...
-----Original Message----- From: classicrendezvous-bounces@bikelist.org [mailto:classicrendezvous-bounces@bikelist.org]On Behalf Of Richard M Sachs Sent: Friday, March 07, 2003 11:57 PM To: OROBOYZ@aol.com Cc: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org Subject: [CR]Making frames more efficiently. VERY LOOONG
snipped: On Fri, 7 Mar 2003 19:00:46 EST OROBOYZ@aol.com writes: " I would still rather have a Richard Sachs or a Brian Baylis or a ...(fill in the blank, even a Dale Brown) where I knew the maker carefully shaped and carved and drilled and sweated the details, rather than a (albeit very nice) Nagasawa or De Rosa or Masi or ? in which the component parts were made via casting accuracy to replicate those shapings that the maker no longer took the time to do... " Dale Brown
dale, this follwing snippet from Tom Rawson's posts re Hetchins seems to suggest that the goal of efficiency in framebuilding pre-dates those marvelous Nagasawa pre-fabbed dropouts and the time saving devices known as investment cast lugs and the cost saving measures of one piece brake bridges, etcetera. to wit, over 50 years ago, the renowned British marque was pioneering and developing methods to eliminate handwork and increase productivity. e-RICHIE chester, ct read on: snipped: ...A second method appears to have been developed by Hetchins (possibly by Jack Denny). The lugs started out as lug-thickness sheet metal. A lug pattern was traced onto the surface, and then the metal was sawn and filed, by hand, until it matched the pattern. To increase productivity, 10 to 12 sheets would be riveted together and cut at once. Jack Denny used this procedure in the shop, but other lug cutters were also employed as subcontractors. (One of them ran into David Miller last summer at a cycle jumble and introduced himself.) After the sheets were cut, they were separated and pressed (or possibly rolled) round a lug-like form into the shape we know with sockets to fit mitered tubes, and the seam was tacked shut. A press was used to form the flat sheets into finished lugs.
The lug cutters were provided with templates or sketches of the lug designs to use as cutting patterns (see fig. 1 below). At least one full set of patterns has survived; one of them shows a Latin Series pattern which never went into production.
A variation on this production method was to trace the lug pattern onto a single very long lug blank and cut away the blank until it matched the pattern. Compared to the stack-method, this was time-consuming and labor-intensive. Moreover, two lugs could hardly be cut identically by this process, whereas stack-cut lugs would come out in identical dozens.