bulgie 

Yeah I think there's some sort of perspective issue due to the photo angle, or lens fish-eye or some such (I know nothing of these things!). Plus something about the shadow in the pic. I know those frames look more balanced, when you see it in person.

Thanks. It's got nice lines. The Atala is my favorite though, classical beauty. If maybe just a bit thin in the seatstay eye where it leaves the lug, I might prefer a bit more meat there, but I'm nitpicking.

I think it was a three-off. I did it on wife Laurie's bike, and one for dear friend and co-worker Ward Griffith, a top local racer who was top-10 at Nationals 3 years in a row among other palmares.

On Laurie's, the stay top is 14 mm vs. the double-tapered stay on mine, about 11 mm at the top IIRC. I like the delicate look of the double-taper ("biconico" in Italian) but on Laurie's the only thing that mattered is "which is lightest?" I couldn't find a biconico that was as light as the single-taper stays on hers, which were Columbus KL maybe? I forget, maybe Excel. Anyway the larger stay top means I'm not sure if it counts as "the same treatment". A variant? But I'm getting into the weeds here, too much detail!

Bill/Bob didn't choose to make that feature an option for customers to order, dunno why, but maybe because it was somewhat more time-consuming, so they'd make less money on it. Not that there's anything wrong with that! On Laurie's, I capped the bottom ends of the fork blades and stays at the dropout with the same scallop shape you see at the seat lug, which was ridiculously time-consuming, so I only did it once. I won't show a picture of that though, since this is supposed to be about seat clusters, dammit!

Mark B