Re: [CR]Early years at Masi : Part 3

> Hello everyone,
>
> Time again to set the "Wayback Machine" for a trip
> to the past. Set the
> controls to early 1974, Mr. Peabody. We will be
> visiting the Masi, CA
> workshop in Carlsbad, California as fledgling
> framebuilder Brian Baylis
> gets his first opportunity to participate in the
> actual framebuilding
> process. What fun!
>
> Apparently I had demonstrated to the Italians that I
> probably would not
> destroy anything if they turned me loose on metal
> parts. Faliero, Mario,
> and Roberto had gone home to Italy for the holidays
> over Christmas; but
> only Mario Confente would return. Faliero was not
> elgible to return for
> another 6 months stay according to the visa laws.
> Roberto had a
> girlfriend in Italy and supposedly wasn't interested
> in returning to the
> US to continue in Carlsbad. He was younger than
> Mario and rather
> reserved. He probably felt more confortable at home,
> not to mention he
> had a ladyfriend there. Mario returned to take the
> position as shop
> foreman once Faliero was out of the picture, which
> is why Mario was
> allowed to return on a visa extention. While Faliero
> was there Mario was
> subserviant to Faliero, sort of walked around on
> eggshells, and was
> clearly not really impressed with what Faliero knew
> about framebuilding.
> Once Masi wasn't there, Mario grew some balls and
> suddenly the whole
> atmosphere was different. Mario immediately began to
> do things his own
> way and was apparently not speaking highly of
> Faliero to Simonetti, who
> was the only other person who spoke Italian once the
> others left. We
> only kinda got the drift by the way they were acting
> and a few of the
> "jokes" that were made about "the old man". I missed
> Faliero.
>
> My first encounter with Mario personally once he was
> in charge sticks in
> my mind. It is one of the more humorous things that
> happened to me while
> I worked there. In the production situation there,
> everything was done
> in relativly large quantities. That is the best
> situation for learning.
> One would usually spend several days or a week or so
> doing one
> particular job. By the time you were done one could
> be quite expert at
> the task at hand. My first filing assignment was to
> file front dropouts
> that had been brazed to fork blades. The dropouts
> were brazed into
> straight forkblades and they would line them up on a
> workbench that had
> your vise mounted to one end. There were probably
> 200 fork blades to
> file. It looked like a lot of work. The operation
> itself is relativly
> simple and involved two basic steps. First, the
> edges of the dropout had
> to be squared off and then blended into the
> forkblade so that it flowed
> smoothly and gracefully together, making sure to not
> undercut anything
> or take anything off of the raised area of the
> dropout. This was done
> with a 12" half round bastard file initially and
> then smoothed in for
> the final bit with a 6" half round smooth file. Once
> that was
> accomplished you had to work on the part of the
> blade that had been
> filled with brass. Care was to be taken not to file
> off the raised area
> again, this time from the side as opposed to around
> the outside edge.
> Further, one must not file a trough or undercut the
> surface of the
> dropout as you used about a 10" round bastard file
> to make a radius on
> the brass from the side of the dropout to the edge
> of the forkblade.
> This requires a little care. Smaller files can be
> used but the radius
> begins to come back on itself and looks like crap
> compared to using a
> bigger file and producing a consistant even radius.
> One tries to make
> them even on both sides. It is finished off by
> sanding with 80 grit
> emory cloth.
>
> On this day, Mario showed me what to do by doing a
> demonstration part to
> use as a "sample". It was set on the bench along
> side the other 199
> parts and I was instructed to proceed and work
> carefully until I got the
> hang of it. Mario was to return in about an hour to
> see how it was going
> just to make sure I wasn't going to ruin a whole lot
> of parts. He went
> off to his other duties and I cautiously set to
> work, as is my nature. I
> do my best to understand instructions and do as I
> was instructed. Within
> about an hour, Mario returned to inspect my
> production so far. When he
> returned there were about 8 or 9 parts filed and
> lined up as I was
> progressing down the row. The entire bench was
> covered with the
> forkblades. Nervously I awaited his critique. He
> looked at each blade
> one by one. Things were going fine until he reached
> for one blade and
> suddenly he was displeased. I thought crap, I must
> have messed one up
> somehow. Mario says "this one is no good" through
> the interperter. I
> looked it it myself and suddely realized that it was
> the sample! The
> others all matched and were done in a consistant
> manner, as is my habit.
> Before I realized, in my 20 year old lack of
> diplomacy, I blurted out
> that that was the one he had done as a sample. Mario
> wasn't amused.
> Nothing drastic happened on account of that incident
> I don't think, but
> Mario probably wasn't too pleased with the
> longhaired California
> smartass at the time. Later on after work, at home
> with my friends I
> laughed my ass off because it was so classic. There
> were a lot of funny
> things that happened like that; that was one of my
> earlier looks at what
> the Italians were like. This reminds me of something
> even funnier that
> happened while Faliero was there that will perhaps
> give everyone an idea
> of what I'm talking about. It goes right along with
> the fact that Mario
> would come back to the shop or stay late or whatever
> was neccessary to
> fix any mistake HE had made during the day that he
> didn't want us
> Americans to see him doing. Years later when
> Simonetti told me about
> this I really split a gut. What the hell is wrong
> with being human and
> subject to making a mistake once in a while?
>
> During a bike assembly that Faliero was doing, which
> is what he did most
> of the time while he was there, he had a bike nearly
> completed when he
> realized that the top nut of the headset wasn't
> going to tighten because
> the steerer was about 1mm too long. The bike was in
> the stand and nearly
> completed, so he decided not to take the fork out of
> the frame to make
> the small cut. He removed the bar and stem that was
> still connected to
> the brake cables and let them hang. He took off the
> top nut and was
> going to just slice of the offending millimeter with
> the hacksaw as the
> bike was in the stand. Well, as he was cutting
> towards the frame the saw
> slipped and it slid across the top tube of the
> frame, and needless to
> say left some nice big hacksaw marks there. Faliero
> blurted out the
> Italian equivelent of "God Damn it!!" (a little help
> here Pergolizzi,
> something like "Adia Voya" is how it sounds) and
> suddely everyone in the
> shop looked up from their work. The workshop was
> very large and the
> assembly area was a ways away from where most of the
> work was done.
> Suddenly he realized that everyone was looking to
> see what happened and
> === message truncated ===

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