Question: When was the first braze on shifters
 

Hey experts!

Someone on my YouTube Channel asked when the first Braze on shifter bosses were introduced.

Does anyone know that question.

Here's what I do know.

My 74 Moto Grand Record have strap on. The top of the line 74 Bianchi has strap on but the 75 is braze on..

So, Do you guys think that 75 or so was the first year? Or am I way off?

Late 40s/early 50s Simplex.

Not uncommon to see Cyclo braze-on mounts on 40s Brit bikes.

1964 Schwinn Varsity had braze on shifters....

https://p1.liveauctioneers.com/5837/...ion=1527897931

1948 Peugeot PH-60

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...3cfb03e2c5.jpg

Yeah. I totally forgot about those!!!

There were braze-on shifters in the 1953 Campy catalog. They probably didn't have anything to put them on, but still. :p

Can I ask the question a different way? In the 70s they were out of fashion. Why? My Dad’s Paramount has no shifter or bottle bosses, but it does have cable stops. In the 80s they went whole hog, even had the chain hanger.

My '46 Herse has a brazed-on Le Cyclo lever. Early wartime ('41) Herse bikes are the same.

I'm not suggesting herse invented it. Lord knows he already gets credit for stuff he didn't invent, his bikes are so heavily collected and photographed. It was far more likely someone in St. Étienne or near there, possibly pre-WWI. Could have been Paul de Vivie (Velocio) or Joanny Panel with a Le Chemineau or other wacky contraption they messed around with. Le Chemineau derailleur was put to market in 1912.

Or any other (likely French or British) tinkerer who thought they could save a couple grams by ditching the clamp or clip. Or were frustrated it was slipping or stripped a screw and couldn't find another the right size, but had a torch and solder handy.

I believe it was Colnago that pushed the idea that brazeons weaken the tubes where they are attached. Deleting the brazeons saved them a ton of money. They later pushed the idea that straight fork blades are better than curved. Again, not having to bend the blades saved them a ton of money.

If looking at when they became common, it was '79-'80. This is also the time we begin seeing 126mm rear spacing and bottle bosses.

What I remember hearing was that at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, the Italians showed up to race with bicycles without braze-ons. The idea (as already mentioned) was that the brass used to attach the braze-ons might weaken the metal. Of course frame builders everywhere were enthusiastic to copy this and not have to do that extra work (and have a rational to justify making it a better choice). When I started building and repainting frames in the mid 70's, one of my main sources of income was putting braze-ons on frames that didn't have them. These would have been bike boom frames that started to appear in the Midwest in 1970/71.

The 1972 Masi I got in Milan had shifter bosses, 1 set of water bottle bosses on the down tube, gear cable guides on top of the bb shell and a chain stay stop. It didn't have top tube brake cable guides. English frames after WWII had brake and gear cable stops (including a center pull cable stop on the seat stays) as well as a front lamp mount. They often had pump pegs on the down tube. While they sometimes had lever bosses they usually had just some kind of clamp stop so the gear levers wouldn't slide down the down tube. They didn't have water bottle bosses. Almost every frame I made since I learned in 1975 had a full amount of braze-ons. Of course most of those are put on with lower temperature silver. Sometime in the 80's it becomes more popular to put on 2 sets of water bottle bosses.

So when did bottle cage bosses at 2.5" become a standard?

This article might shed some light on the subject: lack of braze ons was a cost cutting measure

​​​​​​Dave Moulton's Blog - Dave Moulton's Bike Blog - Everything Clamp-on

Rivendell said this about mid-blade eyelets in one of their Readers back in the late '90s or early 2000s, claiming the weakening was only significant for the fork. You still can't get a Rivendell with mid-blade eyelets. Generally if they have fork eyelets they're rear-rack hourglass-shaped eyelets brazed up higher in the "mini rack" position.

My '59 Jack Taylor tandem is the earliest bike I've seen with a brazed-on bottle cage mount. The cage looks to be a modified Simplex cage (I think all Simplex cages were originally clamp-on). I think they're spaced at 2.5" but I will have to measure to make sure. Come to think of it, what did randonneurs do before bottle cages? All those lovely '40s and early '50s Herse/Singer/Goeland/Routens/Charrel bikes don't have cages. Bottle of cidre brut in the handlebar bag? Stop at a café because back then cafés weren't just for the rich? Or were they tougher/weather was cooler, so they didn't need to drink?

That's interesting. To be honest, they've always sketched me out a little bit too. That's why my touring bike doesn't have them. A fork is a big spring. I watch that thing move when I ride, and it moves a lot.

I wonder if anyone has ever done empirical destructive testing? I suppose with sufficient reinforcement, a mid fork braze-on isn't going to be a problem. Like I said though, it still sketches me out.

Back to the original question.... Ignoring all the true facts about braze-ons going way way back, a pragmatic answer to the question is approximately late 70s. Motobecanes didn't have braze-ons in 1977. In 1978, they had pretty much the full complement. Strangely though, most models continued to use clamp on shifters for a couple more years. Presumably this was for flexibility.

There might have been some truth in that on high end race bikes as they were going very thin-wall with Reynolds 531 which isn't as strong or tolerant of heat as modern steels. And once something is on the race bikes it's cool and everyone wants it. And if it's also cheaper to make it's a win win.

Bottle holes in particular seem a bit sketchy especially as they're in the thin part of the double butted tube. You are probably relying on the boss for reinforcement.

The braze-ons you need the most are probably the ones where the shifters go because if that slips down and scrapes up your paint it really ruins your day.
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An old-country bike shop guy told me the same in the early 80s...I used to ride 20 odd miles to and from the shop to ogle the merchandise.

However, he also said that some racers in Italy didn't want to be locked into the reach of the braze-ons and wanted adjustability, that it would disrupt their positioning if the shifters were too low or high to the head tube. With the band on, you could move it up and down.

Almost all of our "vintage" steel forks taper signficantly down to the dropout, so almost all of the flexing occurs past the point of the taper. Mid-fork braze-ons are in the "beefy" part of the blade.

The only thing I've ever found to be lacking in good structural integrity are low rider attachments that are only a bottle boss on the outside of the fork blade. I've seen a couple of those fail due to twisting of the rack with loaded panniers. I've drilled out fork blades through the neutral plane on both sides and braze a tube through both sides. Look at some 80's touring bikes and that's how they did it, but you can find examples with a bit on just one side.

Colnago Braze-ons
 

Interesting notion about Colnago braze-ons but Signor Ernesto has been known to fling a little merda di toro! :innocent:

Around the end of the Bike Boom - 1973-74, high end Italian frames started coming into the US with braze-ons. Initially derailleur cable stops on the chain stays,and cable guides on the BB shell then shift lever bosses and water bottle cage mounts. Some started having brake cable guides on the top tubes too.

The "Brits" called them "tiddly bits" and they were used on better quality and custom small builder frames.

The conventional wisdom at the time was that brazing high quality butted tubing in the thin sections like where the shift levers mounted or the top tube brake cable guides or stops attached could easily be overheated resulting in damage that could later crack or fail.

There's some truth to that because many "production" frames were brazed together by lower skilled employees. That's also why heavier gauge Reynolds 531 and Columbus SP tubing was used in a lot of those frames up into the early 80's. The thicker tubing was less sensitive to over heating.

During the Bike Boom, the goal was to assemble bikes as quickly as possible, box them up and push them out the door.

Gitane factory in 1980

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...9041173304.jpg

As I mentioned above, by the mid 70's most quality Italian bikes and frames were coming with braze-ons. Braze-ons were starting to be offered as extra cost options on custom built frames from the UK and the US too.

Concerning the Colnago straight fork blade fad, I have one bike with them, a Colnago Technos franken bike. The ride is very smooth despite the forks having no flex. The thin wall main tubes absorb most of the road shock and vibrations coming through the forks.

One thing that I discovered, those straight forks are very unforgiving when hitting a significant bump at low speed. Twice I've had the front wheel turn instead of going straight over the bump as would happen with curved fork blades. Both times resulted in a straight down spill.

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...8fddb851fa.jpg

One cost savings that was billed as an improvement was the switch from 36 spokes to 32 spoke wheels. 10,000 wheels = 3200 less spokes but more importantly the reduction in time spent building the wheels.

verktyg :50:

You'll never guess who gets the credit for that one on page 220 of the "Rene Herse" book. :p

What I want to know is, is it a conflict of interest if you write the book claiming all the laurels for a brand _before_ you acquire the brand you wrote the book about?

Seriously though, does he say why Herse used inches in this situation? I thought he was a metric-only man.

When I asked Peter Mooney about LowRider bosses in1978,he said he wouldn't drill through a fork blade. (He was saying this to a survivor of a fork breaking and was at the annual club diner when it was announced I was in a coma.) When I asked again in 1984 when asking for replacement fork, he said he still wouldn't but if I was OK with an English generator mount (with its larger bolt) he was willing to do it. I said yes and now have to file all the racks I put on that bike, but the attachment is wonderful.

My 1976 Fuji Pro had just a boss for the shifter clamp and 1 set of WB bosses. Clamp-on brake guides, all derailleur guides and the 2nd WB. (All my bikes get at least two bottles. Now they get third under the DT bosses.)

He had a dream where it came to him that it was ordained that WB bosses should have fasteners at exactly 6.10 cms. Been that way ever since. :)

Campy # 650 Braze-on Shift Lever Bosses
 

The first reference that I found to Campy # 650 Braze-on Shift Lever Bosses is in the 1955 Catalog # 13.
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...94b206492d.jpg
https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...f67682bb19.jpg
Simplex and Huret had braze on bosses too but most were only for the the right side rear derailleur.

verktyg :50: