the term "bronze welded" is only a coloquialism. there's no welding or steel-melting going on at all. e-RICHIE®© chester, ct
What a delight to have Norman Kilgariff join the list. His post on "Claud and Harry, the UK pioneers in welded frame construction" raises one little issue for me, re welding technologies.
In my limited experience, oxy-acetylene welding of steel to steel is not fun, and not always pretty. I last saw it done for water pipes in Moscow in the early 1990s. To the best of my knowledge, almost all steel/steel welding is done with tungsten-inert-gas (electric arc) and similar methods, with or without filler rods. So, one approach to Kilgariff's historical question is when electric welding became inexpensive enough to be adopted for bike construction. If it was not well established before 1940, could we assume that most of what is called "welded" is actually fillet brazing (using bronze/brass to make the join, since these materials melt at a much lower temperature than steel, are easily protected from oxidation with flux and a reducing flame)?
I'm far from expert in this, and would love to be found wrong in my hunch.
thanks
harvey sachs
mclean va