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Toei 'British Lightweight Model'

Found during my daily websurfing routine:

A Toei British Lightweight model, on Mr Akuta's 'My Cycle Touring with Toei' website (here mangled by Babelfish).

As you can see from Mr Akuta's own steeds, and those of his friends, most Toeis are in the French style, so an English-inspired Toei is something of a departure.

This bike features the bilaminate construction and lug design of an early 50s Claud Butler Avant Coureur, with the 'Greatest Hits of the 50s, 60s and 70s' component choices that are almost compulsory on English frames.

More NAHBS

Rich Pinder has put the show catalog online: http://www-hsc.usc.edu/~rpinder/Show08.pdf

NAHBS 2008

Burn up a few hours of corporate broadband ogling some pix from the 08 North American Handmade Bicycle Show:

Bike Portland's Flickr album

Clockwork Bikes downloadable NAHBS album, is now also at Wooljersey

Alex Wetmore's photos

Pegoretti Luigino photo from Clockwork Bikes

Another one that got away

This 1952 Gillott frame, which was on ebay a couple of weeks ago, would have looked good in my collection, but a Japanese collector got up in the middle of the night to add it to his.

I wasn't heartbroken, since I already have a lifetime's worth of projects in my shed, but this frame has an interesting feature that sets it apart.

At first glance this looks like a lugged Fleur de Lis frame like my '69 Gillott, but the seat cluster tells a different story.

Instead of using a lug, a fleur de lis patterned sleeve is brazed to the end of the top tube, which is then fillet brazed to the seattube.

The headlugs are made in the same way, with an obvious fillet when compared to the lugged Fleur de Lis models on the Classic Lightweights UK Readers Bikes page.

Lugged frames also have cutouts in the head lugs.

This style of building was used by a number of English builders during the 40's and 50's, notably Paris Cycles, and Claud Butler who called the process 'bilamination'.

Later, Tom Ritchey used the same process on some of his top-end MTB and road frames as in this photo from the Bob Brown Cycles blog.

Photos: Alexander von Tutschek, ebay auction #260182570977

The Baylis Cycles website

More photos of Brian Baylis' work work from Carlos Martell.
Two galleries, one showing the painting process on a Baylis custom frame, the other showing the customisation of a Pacenti lugset.

The Adventures of Sir Maldoror

Carlos Martell (right) , aka Sir Maldoror is Brian Baylis' (left) protege at the new San Diego-based framebuilders & painters cooperative .

Lately Carlos has been putting some of their framebuilding and restoration work online at maldororbicycles.com.

Without giving away too many of Baylis' hard-earned professional secrets, Sir Maldoror shows some of the processes involved in restoring vintage bikes after after a lifetime of hard use.

Some of these jobs, like paintstripping by hand are just nasty, while others, such as masking lugs, require incredible attention to detail in what seems like a mundane task.

More links to Baylis' work:
Large Fella on a Bike Framebuilders questionaire

Sheldon Brown's Baylis-restored Raleigh Professional

Baylis gallery at the Pacenti Cycle Design site.

Photo of Brian and Carlos by Matt Gorski, from WoolJersey

More NAHBS

If you have already exhausted yesterdays cornucopia of NAHBS links, here are Dennis Stovers photos on the world famous Wool Jersey Gallery.

North American Handmade Bicycle Show

A few people of my acquaintance didn't get much work done today when they found the photos from last weekend's NAHBS posted on the internet.

www.cyclingnews.com has run three articles to date, featuring road bikes, track irons and utility and town bikes.

Over at CycloFiend there is a photo gallery, plus links to other NAHBS photo sites. Be prepared to waste a few hours.

There's not much to dislike, but this Vanilla, built for US collector Brett Horton, stands out for me as a near-perfect synthesis of classic aesthetics with modern technology.

The number of randonneur and porteur bikes is impressive, considering that neither style had any currency in the english-speaking cycling world until Jan Heine started writing about them in the Rivendell Reader in the late '90s, and then in his own Vintage Bicycle Quarterly (now Bicycle Quarterly).

2007- forthcoming delights

Tokoroa Forest Charity Fun Ride
March 4th
Brought to you by the same folks who run the excellent mid-winter Fun Ride at Okoroire.
I've never done this ride, hopefully this year I will be able to negotiate a day off from track training.
There are three distance options: the 35k Radiata Rambler, 75k Cashmore's Challenge and the 100k Titanic
Click here to download the entry form.

Track Nationals
Invercargill, March 13-17
Donna is of a mind to do some damage to the UCI Masters World Records for 200m & 500m, and what better place than the new indoor velodrome at Invercargill.

Japanese Bike Retro Ride
On a date yet to be decided.
Like the Bianchi Ride last year, use of a Japanese bike is encouraged, but by no means compulsory.
At least four regular members of the Retro Grupetto own classic japanese road bikes, not to forget Keirin Pimps Glenn Selwyn & Chris Tennent-Brown who own NJS approved track bikes.

Chris Kulczycki's Velo Orange blog recently featured a list of links to Japanese framebuilders. Unless you can read Japanese, its best to treat them as an adventure in cyberspace and click on links randomly.

Framebuilding Master class

After the ride on Sunday, Daniel Rosser and I were talking about ways to learn about framebuilding.
While I pretend to know what I'm talking about, I am but an unworthy semi-retired amateur framebuilder.
Fortunately, the internet nowadays hosts a plethora of resources for the wannabe framebuilder.

Richard Sachs has just posted some photos of the lug filing process, as it was in the days before investment cast frame fittings.
Take a look if you have ever wondered how a steel bike frame can cost more than US$2500, and take 18 months to deliver.

Sachs himself provides some background in this email to the Framebuilders email list.
Someone with less rigorously retro sensibilities could just order a 'standard' Sachs with oversize steel tubing and Richie-issimo lugs, but, naaah, it wouldn't be the same.