During the short period between returning from France in mid-August and going back next week, I have found it difficult to settle down to a real job of work, so I decided to take stock, so to speak, of some of my ever-expanding stock of bikes and frames.
Having spent some time checking over a couple of Bernard Carre-built Sauvage-Lejeunes, once the property of Henri Anglade and Bernard Guyot, I thought it about time to inspect some of my older properties...and a trio of 1920/30s machines came to mind.
The first is a 1920s Automoto, claimed to have been a team machine but I have no way of proving its provenance, the second is a 1935 Alcyon ex-team bike, and the third one, my only fully-built-up Reyhand Randonneur, the work of the genius framebuilder, Paul Reiss.
I have been corresponding with List member Mike Kone about this one, and sending photos of the two decals on the frame, as Mike has the means of reprinting some decals that I might need...With an "old-timer" such as this Reyhand, which was a "barn-find" it is always a difficult matter whether to renovate or not, Sure the frame on this bike has oodles of patina..that is when I removed the caked on road dirt. Luckily there is no rust whatsoever, but in places the chocolate brown enamel has either been rubbed or scratched off, exposing the coat of red-oxide undercoat clinging to the steel tubes.
I was curious about the condition of the drive-side chainstay which seemed to show the effects of time more than any other tube, so I decided to remove a flake of paint just about managing to hang on to the rear drop-out. Having dislodged it I decided to rub the drop-out -to-stay junction with some fine wet-and-dry paper to smooth in the junction of paint and exposed steel. So...I know that all this is sacriligeous... but I needed to know.
The joint at this point is beautifully profiled..the sort of thing that frame-builders love to shape and form and polish, burnishing the silicon-bronze to a high shine. But...there was no sign of bronze here...just shiney grey steel! My curiosity got the better of me. so I polished away at the underside of the junction of the chainstay with the bottom bracket shell. thinking that, if needs be, this small area would be easy to touch up. No bronze here either, just plain polished steel...as I concluded the rest of the frames joints must be. So it appears that Reiss fusion -welded not bronze-welded his frames. Some real craftsmanship here!!
I didn't let my eagerness get the better of me and stopped rubbing and exploring at that point... I have owned, examined and built a lot..a real lot..of lugless frames, and everyone has been joined either with nickel bronze or more commonly with silicon bronze, the fillets being finely radiused to produce a sculptured stress-relieving finish.
I know that the 1920s Automoto is fusion welded ie steel-to-steel, but I never even considered that the Reyhand might be..it was always, in my mind, a bronze-welded (fillet brazed) structure.
The Reyhand has been completely dismantled down to separating frame from fork, with only the fixed B/B cup and the upper and lower head bearing cups in place.
The frame is a 24" Durifort-tubed randonneur with a large built-in pannier rack, and stacks of braze-ons for dynamo, brakes etc etc. and yet it weighs only 4.25lbs. The fork..with its robust twin-plate crown and everlastingly long fork blades tips the scales at 1.25lbs...making a total weight for the ensemble of 5.5lbs.. Absolutely astonishing !!!
The weight of the frame leads me to assume that the tubes are of very thin gauge..they are double-butted. So...the question that I ask myself is...just how amazingly skilful does a builder have to be to fusion-weld fine gauge tubes..possibly as fine as 0.9, to a thick bottom bracket shell without "holing" the finer pieces?
This is a process that I have never tried when building a frame..and even though I would feel quite adequately skilled enough to fusion-weld up a frame in plain-gauge "gas-pipe" I think I would decline the invitation to try my skills on any tubes as fine as those on my Reyhand.
Has anyone on the List come across similar types of construction on a quality frame..or have any of the List's frame-builders risked their reputations carrying out this type of construction?
Norris Lockley..Settle UK