On the question of the Raleigh overlapping "proud" seat-stay caps, Mike has anticipated my next query..I agrre that this type of trimmed off cap looks far superior to the plate that is just brazed into position leaving an edage overlapping all the way round, as though the frame-buildser could not be bothered to file off the surplus.
My query relates to the sequence of processes in achieving the Raleigh effect as , obviously there several ways of reaching the same finished product. My own to route to this finish would have been to have brazed the plate to the top of the stay, carry out the finished filing and profiling before the stay was then fixed to the seat lug, preferably by silver-soldering to ensure that the plate cap was not detached. although with care and a small nozzle the stay could have been brazed to the seat lug, enabling any gaps to be filled with bronze, rather than with silver solder which is not really a gap-filler.
The other way would have been to prepare and profile the plate as accurately as possible, then to braze the open-topped seat stay to the seat lug and to carry out any filing and tidying uo of that joint..and then to have silver-soldered the cap plate onto the end of the stay, thereby avoiding any possibility of undoing the main joint. The small amount of surplus plate could be finish-filed and the points of the cap profiled into the seat cluster.
There is a third way..of course..and possibly even a fourth..
Which way did you do the work, Mike?
Sorry my comments about Gerald's choice of bottle bosses appeared a little irreverent...but to be fair, the gear lever-bottle bosses do look a bit out of place . The only justification for not using a conventional bottle boss, assuming that they existed, would be to avoid drilling the tube and in some way marring its integrity..producing a weak point or two in the structure
I knew Gerald, but obviously not as well as you did, and I recall in 1975 or 76 having discusions and correspondence with him about the construction of the 753-tubed frames, in particular in relation to the heat-source to be used. He sent me some off-cuts to experiment with and I suggested that I would have used, by preference, a compressed air/town gas torch with its large soft enveloping flames which would be quite adequate for blowing the high-silver content silver-solder through the lugged joints without any danger of overheating the 753 or of burning out the flux.
He replied that the 753 frame assembly line really was an industrialised set-up, using oxy-acetylene torches in order to maximise fairly quick through put, and that he thought the gas/air blow torches would be too slow. In any case, he pointed out, all the frame-builders working on the 753 assembly were very skilled torchmen.
Norris Lockley
Settle UK