Wayne,
I guess I'm out of touch with the bike shop scene these days. The shops I know all have this stuff; but I'm sure there are plenty without these tools. I don't spend much time in bike shops. About the only reason I go to bike shops is to raid the dumpster for shipping boxes.
Hopfully modern bike shops will in time become a bit more equipt. Maybe not...
Brian Baylis
La Mesa, CA
USA
>>> What kind of a bike shop doesn't have Italian BB taps on hand??<<<
> Brian Baylis
I think you'd be surprised by how many shops these days don't have
those type of tools (especially for Italian threading). Case in
point, a fairly new "conventional" LBS near me has a kid (uh, young
man) that works there who was building up a messenger-inspired fixed
gear bike, one of the generic contemporary ones built for a threadless
headset. He decided he had to have a threaded fork and quill stem
(gotta love that). The only fork he could find had a long steering
tube, and needed some additional threads cut. Well, the shop doesn't
have "that" kind of tools, so the kid ended up at my little shop. The
up-side to all this is that young people like the one here may drive
shops to be better equipped again. The shop owner in this case is now
talking with me about acquiring some new tools.
--
Wayne Bingham
Lovettsville, Virginia USA