Brandon Ives made various points yesterday with regard to modern frames made with traditional techniques, to some extent vs. traditional or neo-traditional appearing frames perhaps made with modern techniques:
>4. Files were used for mitering tubes. The small bike builders of
>yore didn't use huge mills or much serious tooling for doing their
>miters or building.
Brian Baylis seemed to concur particularly where mitering by hand is concerned.
Points well-taken, I believe. Definite gray area, this keeper-of-the-flame business...but I think it will have to remain one. Yes, it is a vague term. On a practical level, in terms of our list, we should just bear in mind the balance of content: that pre-'84 stuff is our primary focus, and that modern builders, while of interest, are generally less intensely of interest here. So if the balance, that is, proportion of content is 80/20, or 90/10 or 95/05, we'll be cool...or cool enough? Is it enough for now to say "I hear you, brother"?
Maybe we can all be on the lookout for a better term or two or three, even if we accept "KOF" as a casual shorthand. Yes, it's a blunt instrument. For kicks, how about "heritage builder" (versus "heresy builder"--HA) and "avant-handbuilt" for those bikes built via traditional means to ride the crest of now-ness? Long-ish compound terms are probably the only way to successfully convey what is actually to be talked about vis-a-vis a particular frame.
I think it may be desirable to avoid generalizations about builders of one-off bikes. Since these artists are still alive and working, it's too soon to sum them up! ;-) Another reason to stick to the older stuff, primarily, in our forum.
Now, A QUERY. Many pardons as this may seem painfully beginner-like. Headbadge rivets: I remain ignorant of (or at least not confident of) techniques to re-install them, and even where to get them. Could we have a short discourse on the finer points of headbadge rivets? Stuff like do you use some sort of concave headed driver to avoid flattening the convex heads of them?
Questions (likely quite ignorant) include: so, do you just tap them in from the front? They have ridges on the side that somehow are sufficient to grip? You can't too easily get at them (say to peen them over) from inside the headtube....
I have three bikes for which I have the matching but detached headbadges:
a.) A Bottecchia circa '68 - '72 (repainted before I got it; no headbadge with bike; found badge on eBay)(nice one with Campagnolo ends, needs transfers--ok, stickers--too) b.) A 1959 Carlton (capella lugs, Cyclo ends)(similar circumstances re: badge) c.) An early '70s Peugeot 650B-wheeled (French home market) version of a UE-8; has that thick-framed 3-D logo of lion rampant. You know the badge--sticks out about 3mm with a chromed frame around it. In original paint, but seller had apparently already removed headbadge while parting out frame (took everything); he included the badge as a nice gesture, but now I need those extra-long, hollow rivets...).
Having revealed my ignorance (but good intentions) regarding headbadge rivets, can anyone help? E-mails both on-list and off-list will be welcomed--particularly any info on the added-length rivets needed for that Peugeot.
Thank you, Tom "does my post make me a posterchild for something" Ward New York City, NY