It is appropriate to cite the last remarks of retired steel frame-builder Dave Moulton's blog entries on why cyclists shave their legs. It's traditional.
http://davesbikeblog.blogspot.com/
A number of tools, materials, and crafts are the mainstays within the framework of CR. Then, there are some bicycles which are truly oddballs with respect to those, grandfathered in for reasons I don't understand. I'm not the only one reading who rides a tinkertoy-inspired Alan. assembled of glued aluminum tubes. Well, we Alan riders and owners do have engraved and polished lugs, joining tubes that visually pass for familiar steel ones. I'd guess, though, that the Alans are allowed because they were the young adult high-end indiscretions of some members here, except back then.
But, the majority of bicycles discussed here are just of a specific tradition. I suspect that if Calfee's or other's wooden framed lightweight road bikes had been technically and commercially perfected before 1983 or so, they might be included in the tradition. Natural fiber and all that. And what opportunities for carving!.
CF is today's fiberglass, but with better properties. No need to knock CF to fabricate with and ride steel for the reasons that Moulton still shaves his legs. Or to eschew that plastic Simplex or Benelux der / mech. Tradition.
Harry Travis Washington, DC USA
On Sat, Feb 7, 2009 at 11:18 AM, Jerome & Elizabeth Moos <
jerrymoos@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> I read again this week Vol. 1 No. 4 and Vol. 2 No. 1 of Vintage Bicycle
> Quarterly (Jan had not yet then dropped the "Vintage"), which chronicle the
> history of the Technical Trials. Or perhaps I read them thoroughly for the
> first time. These trials were an amazing chapter in the history of the
> bicycle.
>
> In the account of the 1946 Grand Prix Duralumin, it is stated that Rene
> Herse won the prototype category with a bike that weighed 6.875 kg (15.16
> lbs), a record never to be broken in the two years of Technical Trials that
> remained. In the Golden Age of Handbuilt Bicycles, there is on a page
> devoted to a different customer bike, a photo of Rene with this record
> holding bike, but it is small, taken from probably 20 feet or more, and the
> details of the bike are obscured both by Rene and by the bags that have
> already been mounted. There seem no other photos of this bike in the book,
> although there are several excellent color photos of the 7 kg bike with
> which Herse won the 1947 event.
>
> Does the 1946 winning bike still exist? Are there better photos of it, or
> perhaps Rebour drawings in existance?
>
> For those who tout the modern wonderbikes, these accounts should be
> sobering. These feats were achieved over 60 years ago, almost a lifetime,
> and the record breaking bikes had steel frames, although aluminum bikes were
> often entered in the Technical Trials. Furthermore, the bikes were required
> to have lights, racks and mudguards, and perhaps a bell, which were included
> in the weight, although tires and tubes were excluded in the post-WWII
> events due to the continuing scarcity of good tires. Today's carbon fibre,
> thin-walled aluminum and Ti bikes would still be hard pressed to meet 7 kg,
> even with no lights, racks, mudguards or bell. And although these recod
> bike weren't practical for dialy use, they were not completely fragile
> either as they typically had to endure several days in excess of 100 km per
> day of often terrible mountain roads, and points were deducted for even the
> slightest mechanical problem including a loose BB or a wheel out of true.
>
> One has to wonder if in fact bicycles as practical vehicles have advanced
> much at all in the last half century. Those Trails bikes demonstrate that
> it was possible to make a steel frame as light as today's highend carbon, Ti
> and aluminum, from a material that can be repaired, repainted and refitted
> to last several generations, while many of today's bikes are essentially
> throwaway items. And there were already bikes in the Technical Trials with
> 18 gears, arguable more than enough, while today's 11 speed cassettes mostly
> just duplicate ratios at the expense of adding ever more wheel dish and
> requiring ever heavier rims. Had the trials continued, it would be
> interesting to see what the bikes would look like today. Quite possibly we
> would see modern Ti, Carbon and oversize thin wall Al frames, since the
> Trials rules did not require the frames to last many years or be repairable.
> But at least we would see frames from these materials which would more
> easily accomodate lights, racks, mudguards and wider tires. I also
> suspect indexed shifting might be incorporated, and almost certainly the
> modern derailleur design which merges the Simplex spring loaded upper pivot
> with the Suntour slant parallelogram. Whether today's gratuitous carbon
> fibre would be seen is debatable. Many carbon components give very little
> weight advantage for a much higher cost, so if cost were no object, they
> might be included. But some of the last Technical Trails already introduced
> rules requiring bikes in some divisions to be commercially available, and
> even imposed price limits. So if this trend had continued, one might see
> very little carbon in Trials today.
>
> I believe at the end of the account of the last Technical Trials Jan
> proposes that sometime similar should be reestablised. I think that would
> be desirable as the original trials clearly improved bicycles, and new ones
> would do the same. Not sure the big manufacturers, focused on making bikes
> cheaply with cheap labor and selling them at high prices driven by
> marketing, would be very supportive, but then the large manufactuers weren't
> very supportive back then either. I think such trials today would probably
> be supported by and won by the builders who we here call KOF and who now
> exhibit their products at such events as the NAHMBS.
>
> Thanks again to Jan for telling stories many of us would otherwise not have
> heard, which illuminate a side of the sport in many ways more interesting
> and more relevant than the doings of the pro peleton.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jerry Moos
> Big Spring, Texas, USA