In a message dated 3/7/2003 4:44:37 PM Eastern Standard Time, rick-paulos@uiowa.edu writes:
<< Sure speeds up the building process when you don't have to do fish mouth mitre cuts and be perfect with your brazing and filing. Wasn't Masi really trying to make frame building easier and faster? >>
(Begin heavy Opinion piece...)
You know, that was almost exactly my thoughts about those Nagasawa dropouts.. In them, we have cast in "flourishes" that used to be the signs of hand work... The exposed and tapered edges of the dropout insertions, the scalloped tubing ends, the flattening of the outer edges of the main drop out body. All those things used to be done with a file and an artist's eye. Now all that is required is clean brazing...
Didn't E-Richie have an essay a while back (in a Rivendell Reader?) about his admiration of early DeRosa's and him being unsettled when Italian builders starting building into the new lugs & bbkt shell investment castings sort of "fake art" embellishments replicating what would have been hand work in earlier stamped lugs etc? Sure, this can be described as more efficient frame building but is it the same? Should we value these new parts and techniques the same?
(I don't know that much about musical instruments, but..) In a guitar face plate, are machine routed plastic inlays as the same as hand carved mother-of-pearl inlays? I just see bike frames as a craft (not art) in that they must function as a tool a means of propulsion and traveling efficiency, and, at the same time, can be beautifully made and decorated in a way that enhances their use by the owner/rider.
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
cycles de ORO, Inc.
1410 Mill Street
Greensboro, NC 27408
336-274-5959
fax 336-274-6360
http://www.cyclesdeoro.com
http://www.classicrendezvous.com