I might as well throw my ten pennyworth of knowledge into this debate. All my life I have lived within an hour's ride of the various Bob Jackson shops and workshops, and first met Bob way back in 1953..and was with both him and Johnny Mappleback (of Pennine cycles) at the Harrogate bike show having a laugh about " the Good Old Times" not long before he died. Anybody who ever met Bob would know that he was a very proud man, very proud of himself and of what he had achieved,very proud of his appearance, often described as "Dapper" and equally proud of his bikes and their appearance. Many is the time that I have entered Bob's shop on Harehills Lane and been greeted by Bob, coming out of his little office just off the main retail area...and he was always immaculately dressed in a bespoke worsted suite. This trait wasn't too surprising because he had moved from the workshop into management...and management, in Leeds, meant wearing a bespoke suite. Rumour had it that Bob was of Jewish extraction..and Leeds has a very large Jewish community of very successful businessmen..and Bob just wanted to be like the rest of them. Added to which was the fact that Leeds was the UK centre for the manufacture of bespoke hand-made suits..and many of the top tailors were Jewish. Knowing Bob, he no doubt had cut a good deal with some of them..trading bikes for suits.
Bob's company used to spray my frames for quite a long spell in the late 70s and at that time I was very much into "the Italian look"- acres of polished chrome. Bob once asked me where I had the plating done, because I never allowed him to sub-contract it for me. Ironically the work was carried out to a very high standard with copper, nickel and chrome layers, within a ten-minute van-ride from Harehills, but I knew that Bob had used the same plater, situated some fifty miles away for years and years..and Bob Jackson's still does so by all reports.
Bob was a little taken aback when I apprised him of the nearby plating company, but loyalty ran very deep with his veins, and he said that his conscience would not let him take his trade away from his regular supplier. That was Bob..very loyal to others who were loyal in return.
Turning to recent times, I think the death-knell for plating companies in the UK was sounded, in the mid-80s, when the cost of electricity suddenly surged just about the same time as the Govt. Health and Safety Executive started flexing its muscles. Suddenly H&S inspectors were like a rash on the skin of the industry. The plater who had done my work..quite a large company..decided that he had had "enough" and he simply sold the factory site off for housing development and lives out a good life on the proceeds.
There are very few platers in the uK these days, although the industry does survive, but to a reduced extemt, in the Midlands around Birmingham.
It would be interesting to hear Doug Fattic's comments on the plating carried out for Ellis-Briggs, in the 70s, because they used the same plater as Bob. I recall Jack Briggs taking in a frame that I had built and he was to spray. It was to be finished with an all chrome rear triangle and front fork, the main triangle being Jack's favourite burgundy red flam. When I picked it up a few weeks later he had only sprayed the top, head and down tubes, leaving the seat tube with expose chrome. When I asked him why, he said that he was so impressed by the quality of the chrome, although that tube wasn't the final polished finish, that he couldn't bear to cover it with paint. He asked me where the plating had been done; I answered that the plating shop was about a 20 minute car-drive from his shop, telling him at the same time the price. This turned out to be about a third of the cost that he paid out. I explained that I always paid cash! being a man of some principle, like Bob, Jack said that he felt that he could not bring himself to "settle up" in that way, preferring invoices to be paid monthly "..in a regular manner"
Norris Lockley
Settle UK