Originally Posted by
merziac
Maybe but not necessarily, I'd bet that the discussion with Raleigh included a conversation about them being happy to do it but not for the crappy offer Raleigh was offering.
It likely came down to them thinking "we'll do what we can, but its not going to reflect on us as well as we would like, hope the buyers are satisfied".
Aside from that in this profit at all cost, world global economy, I would also bet that there were out of the ordinary and scope challenges with a project of this size of 250? frames smallish, but full size range bigger problems and challenges.
This is why most companies had a special group, shop, division or whatever for this stuff back in the day so quality could be escalated for top shelf projects, something no company nowadays maintains at anywhere near the level needed for a project like this.
Thru the last decade +, Maxway has built for Black Mountain, Soma, Rivendell, All City, Jamis, Kona, Surly, VO, Ritchey, Masi, and many more.
They are completely capable of cleaning up brazed shore lines. They build with generic tubing, varying levels of Reynolds, varying levels of Tange, and more.
And from what I can see, they supply brands with relatively small orders as well as large orders.
Agree that there may have been a limit on work for what wpuld be paid. At the same time, I've seen many relatively inexpensive frames from them(under $800) with brazed dropputs that are clean.
I haven't seen pics of these allegedly hideous Raleigh dropouts with braze blobs. I'll have to Google around to see.