At 12/28/2008 10:26 AM -0800, Bob Freitas wrote:
> I think the Italians had a great design where the upper
> tube curved up where it joined the seat tube. I believe this gave
> that joint a much stronger bond and reinforcement. This area was
> usually chromed to put a durable finish in an area which would
> receive a lot of wear. I would have posted a photo but amazingly
> could only find one which was quite poor. Our collecting must
> really be gender specific even though I would expect 5-10% of my
> sales were Ladies bikes (counting 3 speed lightweights
Bob, Those were/are quite lovely. However, they only make sense with heavy, relatively soft tubing. You could never bend a light, butted tube to that radius. I may put a very large radius curve in the TT though. I made a bender that gives about a 22" radius to a 1" tube.
This thread is starting to drift OT but I will be using mostly 531 and at least some of the joints will be Bi-Laminated.
Mark Stonich;
BikeSmith Design & Fabrication
5349 Elliot Ave S. Minneapolis, Minnesota 55417 USA
Ph. (612) 824-2372 http://bikesmithdesign.com
http://mnhpva.org