obrentharris 

A few months ago @retroman57 was kind enough to reply to my request in this forum for a tall frame with chrome head lugs and socks for a painting project I have in mind. Fortunately for me he lives only twenty miles from me. From a small selection of frames I chose this Atala. In my only as-purchased photo you can just make out the edge of the Reynolds sticker on the seat tube.



I was dubious that an Italian frame would be built with Reynolds tubing. Indeed I thought I had found my proof when I examined the steerer tube and discovered this Columbus stamp.



This week I finally got around to stripping the paint from the frame and was surprised to find this Reynoolds 531 stamp on the down tube.



Further investigation turned up another, very faint Reynolds stamp on the top tube.



Even the fork has Reynolds blades.



I know that many custom builders will use more than one brand of tubing in a single bike but was not expecting it in a production frame

Brent.

juvela

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Looks like another fun project!

Will enjoy following along with your usual outstanding documentation.

Lug pattern Prugnat 62/d

Fork crown Agrati "SPORT" Nr. 026.8058

Expect underside of shell to exhibit two "25"'s


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obrentharris 

Right you are!



Please elucidate. Did this Italian firm, using English tubing, actually measure their frames in inches?



The top of the bottom bracket for good measure. Letting us know which direction to turn the cups?

Brent

unworthy1

not that unusual for an Italian builder to use Reynolds 531, especially in "earlier" years (see Masi for example) but I was surprised to see the Columbus steerer.
Plus is this Agrati "SPORT" Nr. 026.8058 forkcrown one that used a typical early Reynolds "long oval" blade or a later Reynolds "Continental" blade. OR did Atala reshape the blade tops to fit this crown?

cudak888 

Someone ran out of steerer tubes that day and pulled a few out of another bin, apparently.

It's said to have happened with the 1980's post-Paramount Schwinn Superiors too - as the supply of ex-Paramount parts dwindled, Don Mainland would occasionally throw a Columbus tube in them if need be to finish a frame.

Tubing is tubing. Might be a bit different and from a different supplier, but if it's close enough...

-Kurt

Bianchigirll 

According to the catalogs Bianchi built lots of frames with Columbus main triangle and Falck stays and at times fork

smontanaro 

It seems they did. My 1970 Super Pro is also stamped in inches. The decals on yours suggest it's somewhat later than mine.

​​​​​​​Maybe the two "R"s on the top of the shell were to remind people that despite the Reynolds sticker the shell was Italian threaded. 🤷‍♂️

juvela

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have seen R marking previously but do not know if intended to communicate "right."

another possibility is that it could stand for Rizzato.

item appears late boom or very immediate post-boom; thinking 1974-75 but of course serial will give datum unequivocally.

one thing meant to ask for but may be too late now is detail images of the chrome/paint junction on the taper tubes. on the medial side it is straight circumferencial and on the lateral side it is an elongated vee shape. this is something found on the better Cesare models at least from the mid-'lx's through the early 'lxx's.


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JohnDThompson 

And French production builders might use a Nervar steer tube in an otherwise all Reynolds 531 frame.

JohnDThompson 

I would expect with an Italian builder a "D" ("destra") would be more likely to indicate thread direction.

juvela

+1

me thought as well

however we need to keep in mind that Cesare marks frame size in inches...

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obrentharris 

73A2781


Unfortunately no more images of the as-purchased paint.

Brent

juvela

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Etablissements Peyrard not a fabricator of steerers

steerer name NERVOR

this belongs to the firm of Etablissements Chapolard - Goubet et Fils of Bourg-en-
Bresse

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obrentharris 

In preparing the frame for paint I found in the seat tube this nice little time capsule from 1973!







The mention of "co-op" leads me to wonder if this was originally sold by REI. Did REI sell Atalas?
Was "The Missing Link" bike shop in Berkeley originally a co-op when it was on the UC campus?

Maybe @juvela whose roots run deep in the East Bay will have an answer for us.

Brent

juvela

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"roots run deep"

what a polite and lyric way of mentioning that am an annuated flatal cloud

Missing Link did sell Atala for a time ca. 1973

yes, they were founded as a collective, rather than a co-op*, and remained that throughout.
there was a subsidiary of the Associated Students of the University of California, Berkeley termed "Students of Berkeley" which supplied start funding for several student operated retail stores in area of the U.C. Berkeley campus ~1972. some of the others included records, stereo & clothing. as recalled, there was a total of five or six of them. Missing Link lost its space on the University campus about 1977 and relocated to a storefront in downtown which had been a men's clothing store. some years later it also acquired a space across the street from the store which became the repair shop.

always assumed their supply of Cesare goods to issue from Salvatore but have no hard information

at that time of course they sold all they could get and as fast as they could get them due to "the boom"

the Bay Area seemed to receive a great deal of Rizzato product, regardless of how badged, at that era...

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* possible "co-op" referred to on paper slip may be Twin Pines /National Cooperatives, based in St. Paul MN

they operated three grocery stores in the city of Berkeley at the time of the subject frame


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50PlusCycling

I had a nice, 60’s Atala bicycle, the tubes and fork were Columbus, it had Campagnolo dropouts, chrome lugs, and old Campagnolo components, the paint was a wonderful, multicoated candy apple red. The seat stays where they attach to the frame were different on my bike than on yours, otherwise it looked the same. Honestly, I would rather have your frame, I prefer the ride quality of 531 to Columbus Rinforzati.

gkamieneski

In my younger days, American department stores often had extensive sporting goods departments. One such store was Jordan Marsh which was later acquired by Macys.

As a youth I recall the were often selling Atalas there. Not the level of the subject item, but perhaps with a low end Campagnolo groupo and wing nut quick releases on the front wheel. Often these frames were day glo orange.

obrentharris 

Thanks again for sharing some of your wealth of bicycle information!
Good call on the Co-op markets. You have jogged my memory: I recall now shopping at those markets when I lived in Berkeley and Oakland in the mid to late seventies.
Brent

smontanaro 

As I understand it, my Automoto Champion du Monde spent its early formative years in a display case at the Sears store at 62nd and Western in Chicago. You wouldn't know that to look at it now.

repechage

May Company in Southern California made an attempt also, they had a private label French bike with decent equipment, it was all custom order, price was not discount but not silly expensive either.
‘I had already bought my road bike, otherwise I would have monitored it and watched for it to go on sale.
even had tubulars, signage proclaimed it the World’s Best Bike. to be custom ordered for you!

a year later I figured out how I should have approached it, my grandparent’s next door neighbor sold Cadillacs, Every year Mr. May bought a new car, but he never paid sticker.
one day he went to a May Co department store and asked to buy a washer and dryer at a discount, the clerk laughed but did listen to his request to call Mr. May and gave his name. He received his wanted discount. The next year, Mr. May laughed and bought his new Fleetwood, also at a discount.

obrentharris 

One of the reasons I enjoy starting these build threads is all the interesting bikes and information that come up as the thread wanders and wiggles its way to a conclusion.
All of the above comments are greatly appreciated!

I mentioned at the beginning that I bought this frame because I had a particular paint scheme in mind. I enjoy painting bikes and I also wanted to try out the "1-Shot" sign painting enamels for bike painting. I was intrigued by 1-Shot's online color calculator. You enter any of hundreds of Pantone colors into the calculator and it tells you which of the 1-Shot stock colors to mix and in what quantities.

I wanted to use a rather unusual combination of two colors which I though would look great with the chrome lugs and socks. Here are the paints that I mixed to get my two contrasting colors.



Here's a hint: I used much more of the white paint in either of my mixes than the colored ones.
Hint two: White, yellow, and green for one color; white, red, and magenta for the other.

Brent

jdawginsc 

Lime green and pink?

juvela

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funny anecdote...

as a little guy the first time encountered a paint tinting recipe when it instructed to "mix two parts Nr. 34 with five parts Nr. 18 and one part Nr. 27" i was lost; could not figure out what the heck a "part" was

if it had said "ounces" or "tablespoons" could have understood the instruction but who had ever heard tell of a "part"

"not the sharpest tack in this or any other box"


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obrentharris 

The 1 Shot formulas would have left you even more confused. The formula for one of my colors was:
4002 - 15 parts
163L - 1 1/2 parts
164L - 2/10 parts

So close!



My son, upon first seeing this bike asked "So did the Easter Bunny commission a vintage bike?" My wife calls it the Jordan Almond bike.

I first sprayed a 2-part automotive primer, then the color coats, then a 2-part automotive clear. Alas, this is perhaps the worst paint job I've ever done, but no fault of the 1 Shot color coats. the clear finish I used was over 5 years old in partially used cans. In those 5 years it appears that the hardener lost much of its efficacy. I didn't recognize that the first clear coat had not hardened sufficiently in the 10 minutes that it usually takes, so when I applied the second clear coat to the still-very-wet first coat I was greeted with runs galore, one running almost the entire length of the seat tube.

It took 4 hot days in my highly sophisticated south facing Subura drying oven for the clear to harden enough to sand.


Spot sanding drips without touching the surrounding area is not a skill at which I excel.

Nevertheless I'm very pleased with the result in spite of the very flawed finish.

Almost all the components came from my rather eclectic collection of older and newer bike bits. The matching cranks, originally blue, are left over from my son's MTB racing days circa 2002. The Primo bars and stem, with their "Giro di Sicilia" theme, are actually an English product sold by Holdsworth I am told. 10 speed Shimano indexing drive train.






Brent

jdawginsc 

Did you brush paint or air brush it? It looks fantastic!