Well after all the recent discussions about the merits of the old and ol der RH framesets, it was good to hear from Mike Kone about the new models t hat he is developing under his management. Not too sure about the "...Inc." though.
I have to admit that I have never seen an older Rene Herse in the "nude" ie devoid of paint and chrome-plating and hence I don't know much about th e lugs that were used or whether Rene and his team made their own. I had al ways assumed that the lugs for the best models were cast ones, and that for cheaper models he used lugs such as Prugnat.
Seeing the "new" lugs in the raw makes me wonder whether in fact Herse m ade his lugs in a similar manner, but obviously without the advantage of be ing able to TIG-weld the two parts together. Presumably he would have had t o fusion weld them..
What puzzles me about the new lugs is the stage at which the bronze -welded fillet is added. If the fillet is added at the time of building the lug, there must be a possibility of some of the fillets being melted under the torch flame when the tubes are brazed into the lugs, unless of course the frame's joints are silver-soldered to avoid melting any of the fillets. The other way would be to TIG-weld the lugs together, braze up the frame's joints and then to carefully add the fillets. I am certain that the second way would be more likely to produce a better junction, particularly if the initial brazing were to be carried out with a rod with a slightly higher t emperature. Without Mike's explanation about the TIGing, the lugs could hav e been thought to be bi-lams.
The other matter that puzzles me is Mike's statement "...it is quite lik ely that the notion of an integrated Brevet bike will make quite a bit of s ense to those who previously were not aware of them". I took my first 50+ m ile ride exactly 50 years and three months ago..and have been involved deep ly in the cycle trade and sport ever since, during which time I thought tha t I had built just about every type of bike ...apart from a roadster or&nbs p;tradesman's bike...but I have never heard of an "integrated Brevet" one. Perhaps I have missed out on a marketing opportunity....but I'm still not too old to learn and have a go.
Norris Lockley...somewhat curiously..Settle Uk
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