Defining Bi-Lamination
Brazed, lugged construction has been done for 100 yrs +. The feature that defines such a frame, is that the tubes are connected by being brazed into lugs. The guy who invented this method used different tubes to us these days, different lugs and we even have silver braze, but it doesn't matter. The tube angles, wheelbase, paint colour, doesn't matter. The order in which the tubes are connected, irrelevant. No matter what the mechanism, if it ends up as a frame with the tubes joined by braze and lugs, it qualifies as a brazed lugged frame.
So what of bi-laminated frames? Claud and Paris's 'bi-lams' were very similar. Not exactly the same, but the defining features must be the same or the bi-lam credit would all go to Claud, Paris's frame would go under another banner. Here is Claud's methodology according to Hilary Stone in C+, but beware, this is just a description, we are looking for a definition:
"Although bilamination frames look as if they are built with lugs, they are in fact fillet brazed. The 'lug parts' are sleeves which feature cut-outs just like the ends of the lugs. These are first brazed onto the end of each tube to be joined. The tubes complete with sleeves are then fillet brazed together. Claud Butler claimed that ... ...this type of joint proved to be 25% stronger than a conventional lugged joint".
Clearly it must be sleeved, or any 'welded' frame would qualify as a bi-lam. Based on our data, we must decide:
Is there a minimum or maximum number of sleeves?
Does it have to be fillet brazed? If so then a true weld-up, or lugged Hetchins with long lug extensions, cannot be classed as bi-laminate.
Does it have to look lugged? If so then Peter Brown's recent find, fillet brazed 1949 CB 972465 which only has sleeves onto the main triangle cannot be a bi-lam, as they are obviously not lugs. Scroll down to 1949 at:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/
Does the sleeve decoration have to be in PAIRS at each junction, or over the whole frame? If so Peter's frame cannot be a bi-lam (5 sleeves all as singles, link above).
Do the sleeves have to be applied BEFORE the tubes are joined? If so any makers lug extensions which are applied later cannot constitute a bi-laminate frame. Etc.
As Dennis Ryan pointed out in May, the name bi-laminate is a big clue. None of us can know what was in Claud's head when he chose that name, or was he just pissed? But 'bi-laminate' has a meaning outside cycling, so it's choice should indicate something about Claud's product. We accept this implicitly if, when asked to define bi-laminate, we refer to the dictionary. But without the aid of a dictionary, just going on your everyday notion's and the data above:
What features do you think DEFINE a bi-lam frame? examples:
1) It must be fillet brazed and it must look lugged, sleeves must go on before fillet brazing. 2) It must be lugless but it must look lugged, that's all that matters 3) It must be fillet brazed and it must have 2 sleeves, that's all that matters. 4) The sleeves are the bi-laminates, as long as it has 2 or more of them nothing else matters. etc...
The first Claud bi-lam was the Avant Coureur, which was lugless but it looked fancy lugged as it had sleeves fitted. So I reckoned any lugless frame made to look lugged by adding fancy sleeves, that's a bi-lam. I never considered counting the sleeves. My view has now changed.
Peter Brown has a 1949 lugless Claud (scroll down)
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/
which only has sleeves onto the main triangle. I say it is a bi-lam. So I now say any lug-less frame with sleeves added at the joins, that's a bi-lam. The number of sleeves doesn't matter, they needn't even be fancy. But some in the biz say my definition is way off line.
Certain Southerners, who have cut sleeves for years, have called it cutting a bi-lam for years. They say the sleeves are the bi-lams. Providing you apply two or more sleeves, and there must be at least two, bi-meaning two (or more?) that's all that matters, it can be welded, fillet brazed or even lugged. This leads them to conclude that fancy lug extensions are also 'bi-lams', so a fancy lugged Holdsworth, or a Hetchins et al, is also a bi-laminated frameset, as long as it has two or more of them. This concerns me, but not a lot:
How many sides does a triangle have? It's 4 right? You think 3?? Don't be silly, you knew what I meant when I referred above to the 'main triangle' of Peters frame. The main triangle on my bikes have 4 sides, top tube, head tube, down tube, seat tube. All my pals agree, we have all called it that for years. 'Run off a cliff, a million lemmings can't be wrong'. So the fact that they have called these sleeves bi-lams for years, of itself proves nothing. But before we reach for the dictionary...
The Southern view has a nasty problem too. Holdsworth were using big lug extensions before Clauds Avant Coureur in April 1948, so can't they claim they invented bi-lamination? The Holdsworth Cyclone De Luxe pre-dates Clauds April 1948 AC and they also had a name for it, they called it "brazed with SPEARPOINTS". In today-speak this means 'lugged with spearpoints'. Does this mean the correct name for Clauds 1948 lugless Avant Coureur is 'lugged with spearpoints'?
And it gets worse, because the brilliant Historic Hetchins 'virtual museum' refers to their big lug extensions, as per the latin series launched 1950, and they were big extensions, as TANGS. Magnum Opus, a tiny sample: Phase 3 "...These blanks were modified by drilling, windowing, slashing, splitting, and adding tangs..." see:
http://www.hetchins.org/
I think we need the dictionary now, and that may appear to settle things... until Claud decides to unsettle them again. In tomorrow's post I will compare my view with the southern view, verbatim from posts, using the dictionary definitions as supplied by Mick. Unfortunately for us all, Mick didn't supply them to Claud.
Norman Kilgariff (Glasgow, Scotland)
---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!