At 9:37 AM -0700 10/5/06, Peter Jourdain wrote:
>Hi, All---
>
>Mine of course most looks like the third example from
>the top in Joel's photos, but in mine the S is wider
>and the top crest of the G is more angular and does
>not curve back in toward the opening of the letter in
>the same way that the Joel's does.
One wonders how long those stamps lasted before they were replaced. I doubt Stronglight was making enough cranks to have more than one stamp in use at a time, unless they had the old (and somewhat worn) ones lying around, and when there was a rush, a second person (with an old, "outdated" stamp) helped stamping the cranks.
In the end, many of these companies were relatively small. Unlike true mass producers with huge assembly lines, a lot of handwork (and chaos) was involved. So it would not surprise me if the finish of cranks varied depending on who was doing the work that day, and if several stamps were used around the same time.
And as Chuck pointed out in the past, small companies make one thing and warehouse while production is changed to another product. Sometimes, things are forgotten and retrieved much later, and nobody cared whether the cranks shipped in 1952 really were left-overs from the 1948 production run, anyhow.
I think that is why so much confusion arises when we try to date things. Take the article on the Herse stems in the current issue of Bicycle Quarterly: Both the early and the late Herse stems show an angular profile, while the 1950s and early 1960s stems were rounded much more by hand-filing. Fortunately, stems rarely leave their bikes, so it's relatively easy to date them. But off the bike, it would be hard to distinguish a 1940s and a 1970s Herse stem (unless you have other indicators, such as the bell placement, pressed-in vs. screwed-in stem cap, etc., that are outlined in the article).
The person who did the layout of our book "The Golden Age of Handbuilt Bicycles" lived near the MAFAC factory in Clermont-Ferrand. He said it was a big operation, but even so, he estimates the number of workers employed there as far less than 100. So it's a far cry from the factories churning out Raleighs or Ford Model Ts. -- Jan Heine Editor Bicycle Quarterly 140 Lakeside Ave #C Seattle WA 98122 http://www.bikequarterly.com