That was a signature feature of Bates frames and was called a Diadrant fork. The other signature feature was Cantiflex tubing, which was oversized in the middle, but not at the ends. The bikes were built by Horace Bates and his brother E.G. After WWII, E.G. went off to build bikes on his own. The E.G. Bates frames I have seen do not have the Diadrant fork nor Cantiflex tubes. There are also a few examples of Horace Bates frames without these features. The story goes that Horace first designed the Diadrant fork to curve around a front rack on a delivery bike he was making for a local butcher, but then decided it had advntages for all bikes. Many benefits were claimed, but it best thing is just to ride one and see what you think.
When Horace Bates died, his son took over production for a while, then in the 90's noted English classic bilke enthusiast Ray Etherton acquired the rights, and continued building Bates frames with Cantiflex tubes and Diadrant fork, the frames being built by legendary framebuilder Ron Cooper. In 2001 Ray passed the operation to Scottish enthusiast Martin Coopland, with Ron Cooper still doing the building. See Martin's website:
http://hometown.aol.co.uk/
If you look in the photo gallery of customer bikes, you will see my Cooper-built new Bates among them. The CR website also has photos and information on Bates.
Rather interestingly some current Pinarello carbon frames ridden by a couple of teams in today's pro peleton have a fork with a curve very similar to the Bates Diadrant fork. So Pinarello, at least, must think they weren't all that crazy an idea.
Regards,
Jerry Moos Big Spring, Texas, USA
travis.harry@gmail.com wrote: The 6th photo from the top, or the 4th from the bottom
http://www.hetchins.org/
displays a recurved fork in a red Bates frame. (I'm guessing that "recurved" is the right word, from archery.)
Would you tell me about this fork, as there has been some discussion here about fork shape? With apologies if this has caught someone's eye before and it has been discussed. Hard to search on visual appearances.
Harry Travis
Washington, DC
USA