The 1951 Claud Butler catalogue mentions welded, brazed and bi-lam construction. The term brazed seems to be reserved for lugged/brazed frames, Holdsworth do this too. Welded appears to mean fillet brazed to Claud in 1951.
He describes the Sprint Road/Path model as "Low-Temperature-Welded", then further down the page as "Bronze-welded construction".
Lady Lightweight: "Low-temperature bronze welded" International Club: "C-B Low-temperature process bronze-welded construction".
He adds "Incorporating welded frame construction basically as introduced by C-B in the 1930's, this model embodies the best features of subsequent developments and modern techniques..."
Taken along with the Holdsworths 1939 and 1948 cats, I think this confirms what we all suspected, that low temperature welding is the same as bronze welding which is the same as bronze fillet brazing.
Of course we have to be wary, Claud may not have introduced this method to the UK, but only to his own product range in the 1930's. However, somebody has to have pioneered it and Holdsworths 1939 cat mentions "..the form of low temperature welding recently introduced", that everybody else doing lugless is using, but not themselves.
If Claud only introduced his first bronze fillet brazed frame at the Earl's Court Show in Nov 1938, how did Holdsworth find out about it so quickly as to have it derided in their 1939 catalogue? And what of the other lugless builders? According to Holdsworth everybody else is on Bronze FBrazing, who? and if there are more than just Claud surely the others preceded Claud. What was Harry Rensch doing?
Coming at it from the other side. Cycling 9 Nov 1934 covers the 19th Olympia Show at Earl's Court, 5-10 Nov 1934. UK entertainer Gracie Fields is pictured road testing a recumbent displayed at the Show. This may be a Grubb, Grubb's small ad says he is in voluntary liquidation, but implies he is in the lightweight section, Hobbs does too, yet I cannot find either's stand. Indeed, Holdsworth, Butler, Paris and Rensch, none seem to have stands. Selbach and others say "No freak machines on this stand". So Grubb may not be the only builder doing recumbents in 1934, and they will be either pukka welded or some form of steel fillet job. The 1934 Grubb Kingston in Glasgow Museum of Transport has lovely smooth tube joins.
If Harry Rench copied a TdF bike in 1935 and had lugless jobs ready for 1936 (Galibier first?) and Holdsworth launched La Quelda in 1936, they should be very similar. In those years Le Tour had an "identical bikes" rule. I think one company built the lot, all continental cane and decalled L'Auto (riders name on TT). It is clear Holdsworth steel welded (poss steel FB) 1936-39, either HM or 531, certainly HM in 1939. So what form of welding did Harry Rensch pioneer in 1935? It cannot be bronze welding as that is not 'recently introduced' late in 1938.
It appears like Harry did not pioneer any type of welding/brazing in 1935, but he may have pioneered bronze FB because of the 531 snappies, but then how is Claud in the picture? Maybe they both pioneered it in 1937 and Paris's launched it first. There are lots uf unknowns, where are the facts?
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