At 2/22/2005 07:08 AM -0800, Jan Heine wrote:
>According to Rebour, before the effort, there was a Cinelli stem with the
>sides machined to make it lighter. Then a Pino ti stem during the event.
>Then a standard Cinelli stem with no machining. We know from photos that
>the latter was joined by bars with holes. (I assume there were three sets
>of bars to go with the three sets of stems to facilitate these lightning
>changes.)
>
>The bike that was exhibited at Il Vecchio did have holes in the bars,
>which were mounted to the Pino stem. There were more than in the bars
>shown by Rebour with the Cinelli stem. So there were at least two sets of
>bars with holes.
Just to muddy the waters a bit; In the early '80s Pino's friend Cecil Behringer showed me a Ti stem he said he and Pino had made. He claimed it had been on the hour record bike during the run. He said that two had been made and the one then on the bike was the backup. I was, and still am, skeptical. But many of the outlandish things Cecil said proved to be true.
The stem was feather light and brazed, with no fillets, just enough filler to fill the gaps. IIRC There was at least one tab of Ti, cut from tube or sheet, brazed over a highly stressed area of the joint.
I believe Pino made the parts, and Cecil did the brazing. Cecil would have told me at the time, but I don't remember. I just reread the chapter on Ti brazing in the '76 edition of the American Weldins Societies Brazing Manual that Cecil gave me. It sounds as though Ti brazing at the time (and for all I know still today) required some very specialized equipment. (From what I hear, Pino could have made whatever was need. But why bother when your friend has access to it?) I don't remember if the chapter on Ti was one of the ones Cecil wrote, but he was doing cutting edge work at the time.
I don't know what became of the stem, or most of the other goodies in his shop, after his death. There was an estate sale or auction, but I don't think it was made known to the local bike nuts. I wanted to get the 1936 track bike that Cecil said was the 1st bike frame ever silver brazed. To a part time frame builder like myself, that bike would have mucho mojo.
Mark Stonich;
Minneapolis Minnesota
http://mnhpva.org
http://bikesmithdesign.com