Thanks to the CR Listers, both on and off the List who pitted their wits against the identification of this frame.
In mischieviously posting the query on the List I had already worked out what I thought was the most likely explantion and, not unsurprisingly it was Hilary whoo came to a similar conclusion, but in inimitable fashio he provided more ammunition in the form of an Eddy Merckx bike.
Hilary guessed that the frame with its combination of Anglo-Franco-Italiano features is probably Belgian...due to its BSC threading..very common in Belgium. Jose SAMYN whose name the frame bears was a very promising young Pro rider - Pelforth-Sauvage-Lejeune and later BIC - who crashed in a race in 1969 and died from his injuries at the age of 23. He was born in Quievrechain a small town in NE France on the border with Belgium and lived and died in Quievrevain, an equally small Belgian town about 10 kms to the NE, over the border. It was in Quievrevain that the SAMYN SPORT shop was based...probably after Jose's death.
The frame itself is quite a mystery having elements and influences in its construction and design of four different countries.Here is my interpretation of its origin.
There were never a great many artisan framebuilders in Belgium; I used to go over there to try to locate builders and to buy their frames so that I could offer a different dimension in mretail shop..but I never found more than a handful of them One artisan builder whom I did find, worked in a small workshop built on the back of his home in Wittegem, on the main road between Brugge and Roubaix and not too far from Gent; Quievrevain, and the Samyn shop were not very far from Valenciennes and Roubaix.
This particular builder maintained that there were not enough hours in the day to enable him to make enough frames to bring in a good standard of living - he built mainly as a sub-contractor to larger firms including the wholesalers Witberg (Ishiwata ,Shimano, Tange SR etc) and Simons (Diamant, Alan, Gios, Guerciotti and Rider). To supplement his income he imported the fringe Italian brand CBT-Italia established by Giovanni Tardivo in the mid-50s in Cuneo, near Monte Carlo. Giovanni concentrated mainly on working as a wholesaler of cycle and motorcycle parts.
However in the early 70s, his elder son Guido joined the company and expanded it into the manufacturing of racing cycles, many of them using Reynolds tubing. He was very export -minded and attempted to establish importers in France (Ets Gottfried up in the very NE) and Belgium. A Gottfried/CBT-Italia turned up on Ebay about a month ago. One of the features of the CBT frames at that time was their full-chrome finish (as with the SAMYN Sport). The younger Tardivo brother, Bruno, joined the company in th early 80s and added black chrome finishes to their features.
The SAMYN Sport frame is very similar to the Ebay Gottfried and resembles closely the frames advertised by CBT in the French trade cycling magazines in the mid-70s...even to the simple white self-adhesive vinyl down-tube transfer. The CBT -Italia logo had as its centre piece a very stylised letter 'T'...there is a stylised letter 'T' cut into the Samyn's plain long-point Prugnat lugs and under the bracket. The recent Ebay Gottfried/CBT-Italia had French not Italian threads, indicating that the Itaian company was willing to build frames for specific markets...hence possibly with BSC threads for Belgium.
I am about 95% convinced that the SAMYN Sport is a CBT-Italia..but whether or not it was imported via Wittegem or Gottfried, is impossible to ascertain.
Now...that only leaves us to decide whether the Eddy Merckx bike that Hilary discovered on German Ebay in 2008 was a Merck, a De Rosa, a Colnago...or even a CBT -Italia?
The Samyn Sport is at: http://www.flickr.com/
Norris Lockley
Settle UK