Originally Posted by
timdaw
By way of contrast, here is a picture of the two main types of Herse stem. On the left is the early version, on a 1946 machine, and on the right the 'modernised' version by Jean Desbois c.1980. They are quite different, but both are beautiful. I just wished that Desbois had continued using the beautiful chamfer-headed screws, rather than allen bolts.
Yeah, I wonder if he couldn't have turned the allen bolts down on a taper like the bottle and rack bolts you see on 1980s Nishikis, to achieve the look of the chamfer-head screws along with the versatility of the allen heads! Of course then he'd have needed to rechrome them and everything, assuming they are steel.
It's mentioned in the Herse book that the stems were made by hand. The holes for the slot were done on a drill press and then four hours of filing later, the stem was complete!! I'm not so sure though - How was the ridge around the handlebar exits made? I think you should have been authentic and carved it by hand...........only joking!!
I have an answer all the same. I'm pretty sure the ridge was done on a lathe. I see tool marks consistent with lathe work next to the ridge on mine. They must have had a shaft in the lathe spindle, and clamped the stem to it, and then turned a very slight taper. Hence the stem gets very slightly narrower as you approach that ridge.
Originally Posted by
timdaw
That's great, but isn't the tandem version different to the bike version? I don't know if it is, but it is with other makes such as Cyclo, which had a scaled up version for tandems.
What was scaled-up on the "tandem" Le Cyclo, exactly? My two examples of Le Cyclo derailleurs are both from tandems, but to my eye they look the same as all other Le Cyclo derailleurs I've seen. On my Taylor I have the rare five-speed, and on the Herse, two tension springs were used in parallel to help deal with the long chain, but the arm and pulley look pretty similar to everything out there.