Hi, I've caught the Jack Taylor thread on a PDA I'm toying with while speeding on a train in Northern France. After a week of work hopping around Europe, it's a very pleasant way to be reminded of home, reading about the Taylors .
When I told Ken I was getting married he suggested I used his tandem for th e wedding - the big day is just in two weeks time and we're going to be tak ing the tandem to Southern France for our honeymoon. I hadn't ridden a tan dem before but Ken has given me lots of advice, and Jan Heine's advice pers uaded me replace the old tyres with as wide as possible Hetre 650B tyres, w hich match the brown frame inasmuch as the tandem received a cry of 'ah ele gance de concours!' when I took it to my LBS.
BTW I can vouch for 'lastone'. It was indeed the last one made by all thre e brothers in the Church road works.
Post works, a few frames were produced by Norman alone, in the green shed a t Greta Road and painted by Glen Raisebeck. He stamped them with in more o r less the JT number series, and they had JT decals (sometimes with Glen Ra isebeck's own decals too). He did this in keeping with the fact that he v ery much wanted to continue making bicycles after the others had called it a day. This was a source of considerable tension between the brothers, wit h ghe other two ready to settle into quiet married retirement and Norman ke en to flex his craft and continue making frames. He certainly didn't need the money. His clearly spartan (almost monkish) lifestyle belies the fact that he had invested wisely in some property. The fact that he's had a ser ies of major and debilitating strokes, tragic in any case, is a surely all the more poignant when the victime I someone who lives for work as he does.
Best regards,
Mark Lawrence Oxford England (Currently approaching Rouen, France)
-----Original Message----- From: Jan Heine <heine94@earthlink.net> Sent: 22 August 2008 17:17 To: M-gineering <info@m-gineering.nl>; Classic Rendezvous <classicrendezvou s@bikelist.org> Subject: Re: [CR]Jack Taylor's Really Large Flange Rear Hub
At 8:08 AM +0200 8/22/08, M-gineering wrote:
>Amir Avitzur wrote:
>>The rear hub on Jack's tandem is super-high flange.
>>This enables spokes to be changed without removing the freewheel.
>>
>
>it's a drumbrake
On a drum brake, one flange has to be large (to clear the drum). If
you want to get spokes threaded into the other side (from the
inside), you need very large flanges, too. (The alternative is using
keyhole spoke holes, so you can hook the spoke heads into the hole
from the outside.)
>
>>Who made those hubs?
>
>Atom?
It looks like a Maxi-Car to me, an earlier model with round holes.
The front hub is a Maxi-Car Type 2/3 (the tandem hubs were the same
for both types)...
>
>>Did any other company make them?
Quite a few companies made drum brake hubs in the 1930s and 1940s. More recently, Atom and Maxi-Car made them in the 1970s and 1980s.
What Amir initially referred to are the extra-large flanges that Alex Singer and Rene Herse rivetted onto machined-down hubs (usually Maxi-Car) to facilitate spoke replacement and beautify their bikes. One company who made stock hubs with flanges that large was Prior - see the Barralumin bike in the latest Bicycle Quarterly. I am unaware of any problems caused by this design.
Jack Taylor's tandem looks nice - too bad there is no view of the complete bike. Another listmember owns Ken Taylor's tandem - it appears those guys had quite a few tandems between them. All Taylor tandems are pretty cool machines, and ride great.
Regarding the last Taylor, I suspect there are quite a few "last" ones, as they continued to trickle out after the shop closed...
Jan Heine
Editor
Bicycle Quarterly
140 Lakeside Ave #C
Seattle WA 98122
http://www.bikequarterly.com