Willie,
I can hear what you're saying, but isn't Chrome potentially the same ingredients as chrome moly steel which is supposed to be a beneficial frame material? As per the forks ends, some reenforcement seems advantageous. Its one of the advantages of front and rear racks that I value.
But as for the main triangle, I can see a greater parallel to what you are saying since reheating metal would seem to make it more brittle. I am just saying for the fork ends, that this stiffness may be benficial for road or touring bikes. Raleigh and several others seemed to think so. Notice how now, 'better' correlates with 'cheaper'?
Remember, cost is the greatest variable in manufacturing competition. If everyone agrees to drop a costly feature, then everyone benefits, and the odd person who does chrome has a hard time justifying why they are losing money. I cant' find any whole frame chrome platers advertising on web. I've seen one who does parts which all add up to about $2K but doesn't mention (whole) BB, downtube, and main tube. I'm sure there are, but it sounds risky unless done that way from the factory. No one would seem to have experience at plating whole bicycles, so there may be no 'real' experts - defined as doing a task 500 times consecutively.
Phil Bailey Sarasota, FL
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Jan 2007 21:57:13 +0000 (GMT) From: wilc <cherrycycle1@yahoo.co.uk> To: Stronglight49@aol.com Cc: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org Subject: Re: [CR] Re: fully chromed frames etc DEADENS RESPONSE
hi,all,
like most cyclebuffs i like a smatter of good plating on a classy
frameset, however a conversation recently cropped up with a cycle buddy and
friend who have just taken delivery of 2 new custom frames from Mercian
Derby ENGLAND. while my friend had a road path fixed machine his pal had a
geared machine with loads of chrome , this guy is a good repeat customer of
the Derby builders and is having the managing director staying over for a
leisure weekend in the late spring. he has the run of the works while he is
with them at the shop, DERBY PLATING are the platers which Mercian use and
supposedly the best in the UK . will not chrome old accles and pollock or
753 /853.. this new track iron machine is Reynolds 631 has no plating at
all .. the experienced and ready to retire frame builder commended his
chrome free choice and told him that plating had always deadened a frames
response this is a strongly held belief among many of the old builder