FWIW, I was chatting with Freddy Parr a month or so ago and he was telling me that the Taiwanese family who held the rights to the Reynolds tubing production were in his estimation doing a superior job to the original factory. Mind you, this was here say, and Freddy really wanted me to buy some it so I'd see. Glad now that I didn't. I'm stuck on Columbus. Yet to have a tube fail in 30 years on hundreds of frames. DaveP
frogeye@porterscustom.com
Porter Customs 2909 Arno NE Albuquerque, NM USA 87107 505-352-1378 1954 BN2 1959 AN5 Porter Custom Bicycles
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-----Original Message----- From: classicrendezvous-bounces@bikelist.org [mailto:classicrendezvous-bounces@bikelist.org] On Behalf Of Fred Rednor Sent: Thursday, March 05, 2009 5:22 PM To: brianbaylis@juno.com; Hilary Stone Cc: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org Subject: Re: [CR] Re-issuance of classic tubesets
--- On Thu, 3/5/09, Hilary Stone <hilary.stone@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote: > > Argos, a local framebuilder to me has already tried the new > 531 and they say its not anything like the original - they > used to make aero fork blades by squashing in a former 1in > 531 top tubes - this was extremely successful - the new 531 > just splits...
It makes one wonder whether the new fork blades are actually made from seamed tubing. Didn't Norris Lockley recently mention that some French frame builders had once complained that they often received 531 tubesets which contained seamed material?
In fact, when I first read that post, I wondered whether the seamed 531
wasn't the actual progenitor of the 501 tubing? Of course, the question
about the recent version of 531 remains. I would have thought that a
properly constructed, high quality fork blade (seamed or seamless) would
handle the modification that Argos is trying to make.
Fred Rednor - Arlington, Virginia (USA)