Framebuilder smackdown -- Excellent!
Joe Starck wrote:
> Bill Davidson visited the factory in the early 80s, and he took a look at
> all the frames I'd brazed that day and exclaimed, "Prettier than Bulgier."
>
Well, in the early 80s I worked for his cross-town competitor making Rodriguez and Erickson frames. He mighta stuck up for me more later, when I was on his side of town...
What Bulgier or Sachs can do in their clean white underwear, silver or
> brass, is a different context.
>
Quite so, unfair comparison, a Davidson or Sachs were selling for multiples of the price of a Trek, so you dang well better get a bit more care in the construction of the boutique frame.
Also, the blackness doesn't always indicate a brazing foul.
Well one thing it does indicate is an area that has to be scraped, sanded, filed or sandblasted just to be able to see what's under the black. Lugs with no colors other than shiny steel with a little thin line of brass at the shoreline, clearly visible through the clear unblemished molten flux, is a sight that's very dear to my heart -- I think it's absolutely beautiful, more so than any paint job, to my eye. (The flux looks just like molten glass coating the shiny steel, a very "wet" look that cameras don't capture very well. The flux starts to cloud up and lose that beauty as soon as you take the torch away and it begins to cool -- very ephemeral beauty.) Anyway, that clear visibility tells me what I need to know before I even turn the torch off, as opposed to waiting until the joint has cooled, been soaked in hot water or acid pickle, dried and sandblasted.
The luxury of being able to take the time in preparation, fluxing, brazing etc to get that beautiful look is something I held dear. I'm sure I would've been unhappy at Trek or some such place if I'd gone to work there after getting used to the pace of a boutique frame shop.
Neil Young's tutorial about Gasflux Type B: "when you're out of the blue and
> into the black."
>
Another thing I was grateful for, more in retrospect after it was gone, was the Japanese flux that Davidson got via Takahashi. Non-framebuilders will have a hard time understanding how much the quality of the brazing flux affects the life of a classic-era or KOF framebuilder, but it's huge. "We're always in a state of flux" (nyuk nyuk). When I left Davidson and went to a shop that used Gasflux B (the blue stuff Joe mentioned), the quality of my work and my enjoyment of brazing both went down at least a little . I never did get the name of that Japanese flux, it was all in Kanji and I (sadly) never learned any Japanese. But I never saw the like of it anywhere else, and I've tried quite a few. If I remember right, even Davidson can't get it any more, at least not in quantities less than a metric tonne -- his connection for getting small quantities (like a year or two's worth for a shop their size) has dried up.
I've often wondered if the fact that the framebuilder enjoyed building the frame has any benefit to the owner/rider. I'd like to think so, but that may be wishful thinking. I know the time I spent admiring the work at every stage, and the extra time taken to ensure the work was beautiful at every stage (rather than blasting it out and fixing it later), which was mostly for my own benefit, added to the cost to the consumer and/or reduced profits for my employer, but I just couldn't help myself. Still there are some intrinsic benefits to brazing it clean the first time and not reheating, and not filing lumps off. Pretty sure I'm not just deluding myself about that. I hope.
Also, those seatpost pinch bolts in slide 16 were attached too low on the lug. And your mother dresses you funny. So there.
Mark Bulgier
Seattle, WA
USA