Hello, Mark and anyone else interested in this thread.
>From what can see of the Shorter/Barry Chick frame that CR Lster Peter
kohler recently bought, I would reckon that the frame is more likely to be
an early to mid 80s model than a late 70s one, as I do not remember there
being very many investment cast bottom bracket shells circulating around the
frame-building suppliers such as SABA (predecessor of Ceeway), Hague,
Falcon, Haden etc. Only Ron Kitchen had some ROTA sets. I don't recall
Cinelli having much on offer over here, but that could have been a fault of
the importers.
Again from memory I recall the first available ones, at least at the foreign trade shows such as Cologne, Paris and Milan, appearing in and around 1983...these being Taiwanese models from a company called Ideation Creation (Ben Tan was the boss). Bruno Tradivo, of CBT Italia, started distributing some lugs and crowns, but no brackets. These were imported from Brazil and appeared around 81/82. Maybe I was just looking in the wrong place in the UK.
As for engraving of the parts such as top-eyes and fork crowns, Andrew Hague offered a facility that was widely used, but only if the parts had been made and supplied by his company; there was little real choice of crowns at hagues and no brackets at all. However many jewellery shops had pantograph engraving machines that were very capable of engraving whatever a frame-builder needed; that was how I bought in my engraved supplies. I recall at around 1987 SILVA of Italy entered the market in a bigger way and it was possible to order supplies of his parts fully engraved. When steel frames and pantographing was at its peak SILVA undertook the work for nearly all of the Italian custom engraving, including Colnago. He also did Eddie Merckx's engraving. At that time SILVA had ten staff doing nothing else but pantographing. I think it very unlikely that Barrie Chick would have been able to order parts in sufficient quantities to satisfy an order to SILVA, a very dynamic company with an aggressive Sales Director I
Shorter frames are still being sold among the cognoscenti of north London and the Shorter Rochford shop is as busy as ever - its very much a Mecca for time-triallists still, with the firm sponsoring, as it has done for years now, a T-T team that includes Alan Rochford's son, Darren , and none other than Alf Engers's son, Robert.
The firm has a web-site but it claims that due to too heavy demands via email, it has temporarilywithdrawn the address from the web-site. However, if an urgent request is passed by telephone, they will give out the email address for a follow-up. So if Peter wants to check up on his CHICK..he should phone 00.44.20.8445.9182.
Norris Lockley (formerly official supplier of frames and carbon wheels to the Leo RC-Shorter-Rochford T-T team)
Settle UK