Silver vs. brass brazing:
It is interesting that a lot of Thanets - silver-brazed and all - have failed. It would be interesting to see whether this affected only the Silverlights with their rather unique tubing arrangement, or also the more traditional Silverthans. Failures also were astonishingly common among some early - and some relatively recent - American high-end frames, often silver-brazed, before people figured out what worked and how to do it. So I agree with Richard - silver-brazing isn't a guarantee for a lasting frame. On the other side, a lot of brass-brazed frames go on and on and on. Many earlier European frames were created in a way that today we would consider crude at best, but their track record speaks for itself (or doesn't in the case of some brands!). This world is not littered with failed Masis and Cinellis...
I don't know what the early French used for brazing material... and don't particularly care.
Consider that many of the French bikes were not only ridden for decades, but often modernized several times, which included changing derailleurs and shifters (heating down tube for new braze-ons, heating the seat tube for removal of old lever-operated derailleurs and addition of braze-ons for new derailleurs, heating dropouts for adding derailleur eye, heating fork blades and seatstays for removing old brake posts and adding new ones), plus rechroming the required parts. Makes you shudder when you think about it. (OK, some of the old braze-ons probably were cut and filed off to avoid excessive heating, but you cannot add braze-ons without heating.) On my ca. 1954, all these horrible things have been done, by the Singer shop, and it's still together, still riding wonderfully.
I have seen some failures - a Cycles Goeland comes to mind where the chainstay had cracked at the dropout, and one could see that the dropout had been brazed only on one side! Maybe they were concerned with overheating? A friend thinks simply by rebrazing it all together, he'll get some more miles out of the thing (half of the chainstay is intact, and the dropout inserts further than the brazing material, so there is quite some surface area in his favor.) This Goeland was rather crude otherwise, too. Other Goelands I have seen are wonderful, very finely crafted. Maybe a different framebuilder at work? (I know that the owner of Goeland, Louis Moire, farmed out the construction of the frame.) Barra aluminum frames also seem to have a high failure rate...
On the other hand, there are superlight Singers from 4/10 and 5/10 mm tubing that have survived decades of hard use. Other makers used 3/10 for the technical trials bikes, and even those held together for a surprisingly long time. And I know one strong rider who has a 753 Singer racing bike, fully chromed (!), which seems to be doing fine. The guy was considering becoming a professional racer at some point, so he was no slouch, even 30 years later when he got this bike. (He also has the most wonderful 1952 Singer, which he has ridden for ages and countless kilometers.) Could be pure luck...
Alex Singer performance
As far as Singer performance - I am not talking about straight-line speed, which is dependent on the rider alone (and where I have a hard time unless the road is pointing uphill). I am talking about the ability to descend a twisty road with off-camber curves, rocks, etc. with full confidence, without going to the limit or risking a crash, and then looking back and realizing to my surprise that I have dropped my group, all on modern racing bikes. This does not happen with most other bikes. My Rivendell comes close (I ordered it after a test ride down Mt. Diablo), my Marinoni (1989, 74 degree parallel, low BB, typical Italian 80s racing geometry) did well, and a Bridgestone XO-2 was so awful that _I_ got dropped on descents, while frightening myself half to death.
The comfort also is real - as a racer, I once was given a 1998 or 99 Schwinn 853 TIG-welded Taiwanese bike with some humongous aluminum fork: It beat up my hands so much that I couldn't ride the thing for more than 50 miles. And the 1974 Herse that was in VBQ vol. 2, No. 2, gorgeous as it is, really needed a heavier rider or something - it was very harsh on surface irregularities during my short ride on it. An earlier 1968 Herse I once rode for a week, on the other hand, had the magic carpet ride.
From what I see, beyond the obvious such as tire width and chainstay length, front end geometry and fork shape and materials seem to be most important here. (I doubt the main frame, being triangulated, can flex a lot under a lightweight rider.) I have elimintated factors such as tire width (all were ridden with 25 mm tires), saddles, handlebar shape, stems, etc., because I transferred the same components from bike to bike (Brooks saddle, TTT stem and bars from the 1980s). Except for the Singers, where the bar shape of the Philippe Professionels is so nice that they are comfortable even with shellaced tape, which isn't cushy in any way!
Of course, just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder (ask my
riding companions, who prefer the looks of carbon fiber!), so are
tastes in bike set-up and behavior different.
--
Jan Heine, Seattle
Editor/Publisher
Vintage Bicycle Quarterly
http://www.mindspring.com/
Richard M Sachs <richardsachs@juno.com> wrote:"... silver/silver alloyed brazing has this chi-chi* cache that, i believe, is rooted in some of the misinformation planted in magazines at the beginning of the usa bike boom in the 70s."
Nope, it's earlier than that. It goes way back to the 1940's Thanets and the Thanet SILVERlight & SILVERthan models. Read Les Cassell's ad copy for these bikes and you'd be afraid to ride a brass brazed bike. But maybe Jan will inform us of some early '30s French constructeur who out chi-chied everyone with silver right from the beginning. Jay Van De Velde Seal Beach,CA
On Thu, 25 Mar 2004 19:41:22 EST OROBOYZ@aol.com writes: In a message dated 3/25/2004 2:04:14 PM Eastern Standard Time, jeremylieberman@earthlink.net writes: << Possibly Singer have switched from silver to brass brazing in recent years? Jeremy Lieberman >> I would be very surprised if Singer ever used silver except maybe for some super ultra light specials and/or braze on bits. Use of silver brazing compound in Euro bikes is extremely rare to nonexistent. And even when silver is used, the percentage silver content in the brazing material is likely low, as with Schwinn Paramounts, and the joining temperature is not as low as that of most USA custom builders who most often have silver content in the 45 -56 % range...
Without getting into long windy debates about brazing materials, many many really finely wrought, delicate detailed bikes have been joined with brass. So the care and execution of a well crafted bicycle frame has little or nothing to do with the brazing material used...
At least, in my opinion...
Dale Brown cycles de ORO, Inc. 1410 Mill Street Greensboro, North Carolina 27408 336-274-5959 _______________________________________________
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