Originally Posted by
unterhausen
753 was a departure for Reynolds, and they were conservative about it. You can go out and buy roughly equivalent heat treated tubing now and there doesn't really seem to be any problem with less experienced people working with it. Except maybe those that try to bend it into alignment.
Originally Posted by
jnbrown
Mercian is definitely high on my list. Their prices are still low compared to most other custom builders as are many other builders in the UK.
For some reason custom bike frames are just cheaper coming from the UK, but of course then there is shipping and possible unknown import duty which evens it out some.
In my quest to learn how to build bicycle frames in the 70's, I visited many frame builders in the UK before, during and after my time at Ellis Briggs in Yorkshire. At that time frames needed to be cheap in order for the working class to be able to buy them. I paid $75 for a straight stay Hetchins in 1969. When I was at Ellis Briggs in 1975 inflation raised to cost of frame to around $150. The Majority of British builders had to make frames fast in order to meet the price the market expected to pay. Harry Quinn told me he made 2 frames a day. I think the average for many builders was about 1 a day. At Ellis Briggs, their frames were not the money makers so Andrew and I could take the better part of a week to make one frame. The low cost of a custom frame meant that the builders not only had to make them fast but also didn't have money for fancy equipment. Their methods for making them were pretty crude.
This culture can explain why Reynolds needed to raise the standard in order for the sale of their new thin walled heat treated tubing to be successful. Everyone used brass (actually bronze) instead of much more expensive lower melting silver as filler and if they aligned their frames used brute force. Their traditional methods wouldn't work with 753 so some new requirements were necessary or they would break and their reputation ruined.
Some of the master builders in the UK when I was learning in the 70's were hearth brazing their frames together. As I understand it Mercian is still using this old method. We actually hearth brazed frames while I was at Ellis Briggs until Andrew the journeyman builder decided to do it all with an oxyacetylene torch. Hearth brazing is one giant natural gas flame augmented with a squirrel cage supplied air oxygen. A frame is hung over fire bricks surrounding the joint to be brazed. The good news is that this giant flame provided even heat (so the joint is less likely to go out of alignment) but it made a lot of the frame red hot. This is a system left over from the 19th century and just got passed on and not changed much.