Originally Posted by
David Newton
Did not the Reynolds tube-set that contained all the tubes, forks and stays come with decals in the box that said "made with Reynolds tubes forks & stays" and no fork decals?
Boxed sets of Reynolds 531, 531SL and 753 tubing came with one seat tube decal and 2 fork decals.
Larger producers bought tubing in bulk. Reynolds meted out enough decals to match the number of frames that could be built from the number of tubes purchased.
In general, Reynolds minimum order for standard and special tubing sets amounted to enough tubes or sets to build a 100 frames. In smaller quantities Reynolds referred buyers to "stockists" in the UK and specialty vendors in other parts of the world.
As I mentioned in post 4 above, Reynolds water slide decals were fragile and hard to apply. It was easy for some of the water soluble glue to get washed away. Later the decals would start to lift. Bikes were rarely clear coated back then so the decals were exposed to the elements and physical contact.
During the bike boom the European bike makers were pushing bikes out the door as fast as they could box them up. If a decal wasn't properly applied, tough! Frame decals probably got more attention than fork decals.
40 to 50 years ago, who in the bike industry could have imagined that collectors like us would fret over "little things" like tubing decals? After all, the life expectancy for a bike back then was 5-10 years!
verktyg
Chas.