Hi Crew,
Jim Bundy is a legend a 'legend in his own lunchtime' as we would say
over here in Australia...just a play on words..
Given the right timing, you can call into Jim's, have a beer, watch Jim
fire up his torch and get your job done within a short time, have a
couple of more beers, shoot the breeze, watch an old bike race on VCR,
and leave fullfilled and knowing all is good in the world.
He is my main frame man who can tackle almost anything I can challenge
him with.
Probably the greatest challenge was with a 60s Cinelli frame that I
sourced from the US (from a listmember) that was a virtual basket case.
Cost me very little so I wasnt too keen to pay the $350+ shipping charge
to Australia. Soooo, I had the seller slice the frame up with a 4"
Makita angle grinder so as it would fit into a small box and reduce the
shipping to about $30.
This is where Jim comes in.....Jim sweated the cut tubing out of the
lugs and replaced the tubing with new fresh tubing. All done on a jig
that has built thousands of frames over decades.
This was a good time to look at the quality of brazing on the old frame
and it was not on par with Jim's new brazing at least as far as
penetration goes. During the process there was one snag which was
unexpected. A problem with sweating the tubes from the seat cluster
resulted in Jim fabrication a whole new fastback seat cluster which
cannot be differentiated from the original. The final filing and
cleaning up is yet to be done and then chrome...paint...and build.
I have a photo gallery of the whole deal here
http://www.flickr.com/