At long last I have managed to post some snaps of my son´s and my own
new Ellis-Briggs randonneur frames on wooljersey. The URLs are:
http://www.wooljersey.com/
Sorry to say that our pro photographer friend has been very busy lately, so those daring to look at the snaps will have to put up with my amateurish attempts.
Let me add that I have analog dial up internet, so please DO NOT SEND any PHOTOS to my e-mail address. Thanks.
Also I would like to say that my frame is something of a communal CR effort as I got a lug, a decal and some great ideas off members. One member, Tobit from Dortmund, actually saved the whole project when he pointed me to a source for an outsize length seat tube which neither Reynolds nor Columbus nor anyone else seemed to be able to furnish. Many thanks to the community and especially to its founder.
The seat tube of my frame actually is not Reynolds but Walther. Walther
have their own high tensile tubing (look them up on the net as Fahrrad-Walther, Offenburg, Germany - fascinating) and so were able to
furnish a 72 cm long tube which was needed to realize my wish of a 68 cm c/t standard geometry frame. The Campag 1010s came from last year´s
Stalen Ros collectors´ meet in Holland, and not having ridden the frame so far, the only unpleasant surprise was that the platers nearly polished the stamping away - hardly readable. The polishing is really shiny, no question, but the crispness of the new dropouts has been lost.
A friend of mine who is a wizzard at the lathe made the stainless Mafac
centrepull braze ons and the bronze bushings that went inside the caliper arms as well as the headset spacer with integrated cable hanger. Marvellous work.
I made a point of having lots of braze-ons added, especially carrier ones, to make sure I get maximum flexibility in use. So strictly speaking the bike won´t be a randonneur if I add the racks, but then
who cares.
The round braze on behind the seat tube is for a French style rear light. The holes in the RHS seat stay are for internal gear cable routing.
Lastly I really have to say that the process of talking the frames over
with the people at Ellis-Briggs, mostly Paul and Andrew, and communication while building was excellent. A visit to their Yorkshire
shop is an experience. I actually felt quite privileged and taken serious as a customer, and nobody ever let me feel how weird and labour
intensive my ideas were. Andrew as the framebuilder did a marvellous job. From what I could see and feel inside the tubes or the b/b build
quality is first rate. Ellis-Briggs have a fantastic website as well as
a blog.
Please don´t ask when I´ll be able to build the bike - I´m really
loaded down with work and I do hope it won´t be the summer vacation before I find the time.
Regards, Toni Theilmeier, Belm, Germany.