Match had a really fancy assembly jig for the rear stays and seat cluster that assured perfect alignment at brazing time. They also had a milling setup that cut and mitered the top of the seat tube all in one pass. Match had really great attention to detail during the assembly process, and it looked to me like the shop had the capacity for large frame production capacity, maintaining high quality and hand craftsmanship PLUS innovative use of tooling and fixtures for accuracy and consistency.
A very impressive shop!
===================================================== Mark Petry 206.618.9642 Beautiful Bainbridge Island, WA mpetry@bainbridgeisland.net
===================================================== "Fighting a preemptive war is as irrational as committing suicide because one fears death."
--Otto von Bismarck =====================================================
From: OROBOYZ@aol.com To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org Subject: [CR]Clarification of Match-Paramount build quality...
I received a nice note from ex_Match/ Paramount builder, Curt Goodrich.. I had falsely assumed the seat stays were a plug-in labor saving dealie.. Read below how really cool this area was in these fleeting examples of Paramount bikes...(The last "real Paramount?"
In a message dated 4/9/2003 2:41:38 PM Eastern Daylight Time, goodrichbikes@netzero.net writes:
<< I'm still confused about what you mean about the seat stays being attached to the seat lug as plug in. The seat stays are fillet brazed to the seat lug. The ends of the seat stays do have a casting brazed on them like seat stay plugs. The advantage of these were that the right one was already drilled and countersunk. The left one still had to be drilled and tapped. The cool thing about the casting was that it was hollow and only solid where it needed to be. It was a real weight savings compared to the traditional method. >>
Dale Brown
cycles de ORO, Inc.
1410 Mill Street
Greensboro, North Carolina