Road Fan

Some of you may know I’m still working on restoring a hair of Witcomb bicycles owned by friends of ours, bought in the early 1970s at the Witcomb dealer in East Haddon, CT. These are the low-cost product line. The frames were built and the bikes assembled in a factory in Ireland. On disassembly the steer tube separated itself from the fork crown. The plan was always to send them out for paint, so the painter, also a frame builder, rebrazed anything sketchy, replacing both steer tubes. It looks like both are new tubes. I see several problems, but some of them might not matter.

1. The crown race seats have been painted with the final paint. I want to clean it off so I can measure the diameters, assess roundness , and see if the original races are suitable. I can do all that, I have emery cloth and the ability to do some knurling if necessary. I don’t think there’s anything I’m missing on this point, but I’m looking for input.

2. The end of one of the steerers is just cut straight off with no chamfer. It is hard to start a relatively new 24tpi part on it. In “Designing and Building your own Frameset,” Dick Talbot recommends to chamfer it with a mill file. At least on vintage hubs, nuts and such thread easily if this is done. Would you recommend it, or is it a bad idea?

oneclick 

Scrape the paint off with a small blade, finish with emery.

And go right ahead and take a file to the thread end on the steerer.

cudak888 

Ask the framebuilder if they have a crown race facer. If so, have them face the paint off the mating surfaces for a perfect seat for the crown race.

-Kurt

Road Fan

I may still do that, thanks!

Road Fan

I've got the paint off of the sides of the crown race seats. I used emery cloth on one of them and used my old Xacto knife to carve back the paint on the other. The diameters are both around 27.1 mm, so these are French crown races. Neither one has perfect races, but if I can't find a pair of new or near new French races in perfect condition I'll just install what I have. So I think I have the side of the seats sorted out.

I'm not sure about the actual crown race seat. I think the crown race is supposed to rest on a ground or flattenned "platform" which is attached to or cut into the atual structureal fork crown, at least this is what I think is going on. It's a little hard to be sure - most books on bike mechanics are about selecting, installing, tuning, evaluating, and replacing parts, not the base requirements for frame setup and preparation. The race needs to be pressed until it seats on its surface, but I'm not sure a flat surface has actually been made on the fork crown.

Probably the repaint did not result in removing any steel from the fork crown so whatever the crown race was seated on originally is most likely still there. Is it supposed to be painted steel or bare steel?

79pmooney

Total sidetrack to this thread. Dick Talbot. I hope he is well and enjoying life. 45 years ago we were NEBC clubmates. I still have a pair of Campy steel quilled pedals he sold me that started their second life on my Peter Mooney in 1979. (I roughly doubled the 19,000 miles Dick put on them. They are still going strong; just neglected because my pedal choices have changed. Peter Mooney was also a fellow clubmate.)

Ben Jeffries

Road Fan

Thanks a lot for that, Ben! I'm not very familiar with the Paterek book, but I read Talbot cover to cover a few times. I was towrd the end of my BS Eng at the time, and I thought, what a great idea for a Masters' project!

His stability criterion drove me crazy - in those days I was into reading the math behind everything!

repechage

ya think that your typical French builder aside from three or four artisan builders I can think of cared?
put some light lube on it and use the typical slide hammer style race installer.
done.
use loose ball bearings and if you have notchy steering, mark then rotate the cups 60 to 90 degrees opposing directions to help avoid any indentations.

Road Fan

What aggravates me with a headset is when the fork binds at a certain point in its turn and is loose, shaky, and clunks over bumps at 180 degrees away from this point. Brinelling is not my concern here, and I'm pretty darn sure these bikes are not gonna have indexing.

I don't care how the Irish (they weren't French) original builders felt about it. And I've ridden enough old steel with surprisingly good steering that I don't in the first place believe I should make something crappy just because somebody believes (or seems to) that it can only be made crappy because of some goofy reasoning that is lost in history. I have these bicycles in front of me and they need to get put together so they work decently. I'm not building these for historical restoration. I'm building them so my friends can continue good riding on their very sentimental bikes.

Anyway, I normally use a 3# hammer and a steel drift to install these. With lube.

repechage

Get a proper press.

clubman 

Maybe remove the crown race and go at the seat with a narrow flat file to avoid paint damage. Lube with grease and tap it down.

cudak888 

The following assumes proper facing:

Take a wrecked frame with standard-dimension tubing. Cut the 1-1/8" downtube out. Provided you have a 1" steerer tube, you've just made yourself a crown race hammer.

-Kurt

verktyg 

Road Fan NON! NON! NON!

"Hammersmithing" doesn't fix the problem!

Any frame builder or painter worth their salt SHOULD have faced off the crown race with a proper facing tool !!!


Unless you have headsets with 27mm crown races that are in good condition, I'd recommend refacing the crowns to fit the much more common 26.4mm size crown races.

The head tube should have been refaced TOO!

Note: I've replaced the head tube reamer with a properly sized brass bushing so as not to cut the bore oversize when refacing.



Anytime I'm working on or installing a headset, I reface the crown race and top and bottom of the head tube. Especially with alloy cups.

It's a 10 to 20 minute job and well worth the effort to have a fork that rotates smoothly side to side. It makes a difference in handling too!

As others have mentioned, use grade 25 alloy steel loose ball bearings and rotate the cups slightly if there are any indentations. It works!

verktyg

Doug Fattic 

So Dick Talbot is a real person? I figured that was a pen name or a pseudonym. His book has long outlived any usefulness as a source for good frame building information. In fact it contains some really poor information. He did a reasonable job explaining how to build a front triangle and a fork but failed completely in describing how to make a rear triangle. There is no hope a rear wheel will end up where it belongs using his method. As I understand it, Dick researched how to make a frame from other American builders. He then designed some wood home made fixtures that were his interpretation of what he saw to make a frame himself. The book is printed documentation of the process he used to make his very 1st frame. It resembles a master's thesis. Obviously if he had made another 10 frames he could have refined his process a lot. And of course an experienced frame builder would avoid Talbot's rookie mistakes. The Paterek Manual is decent although I do things differently. In fact almost all custom builders do things a bit differently from each other.

79pmooney

I never read his book. I believe he was writing it in 1976 when I was in my first year of racing and active at NEBC races. Dick was working hard on his TT'ing to qualify for the nations next year. The next year I was training hard, not riding many club races as that was my distance day and I didn't see a lot of Dick. Sadly, that was the year the Masters category went from 40+ to 35+. Dick at 45 had a real shot of winning a 40+ States but at 35+, no chance at even qualifying for the Nationals. (I recall he beat all the 40+.) My third (and last) year of racing was post TBI. I was very focused on my recovery and achieving the best I could in races and the rest of the world simply passed me by. I think Dick's book came out then. (I knew by mid-June Peter Mooney was building my post-racing days bike. More on framebuilding was simply TMI for this TBI brain.)

Road Fan

HEY VERKTIG!!! CHILL THE F... OUT!!!!! What gives you the right and reputation to speak to me that way?

I think you are making assumptions, certainly about what I plan to do with the hammer. Using a large hammer does not mean I will use it's full force. Hammersmithing, whatever the HELL that means to you ... I just don't know.

Why am I bothering with you guys?

cudak888 

I don't see any personal insult in what he said. If anything, I wouldn't take "hammersmith" term seriously; it's his brand of humor. Plus, he's directing a lot of it towards the painter/framebuilder.

He's also right that the painter should have sorted this out, especially since said painter is also a framebuilder. That combo of skills is almost an obligation to properly face and chase one's end product.

Take it easy - he's just trying to save you from a lot of frustration of trying to do the job any other much more laborious and less effective way. He's also trying to save you possible tears if the paint cracks, which I've seen on countless fresh builds (which nobody will own up to either when it does happen).

-Kurt

tricky 

Are you trolling? You can get ok results with a hammer, but if you care that much about a fork binding...

You asked about finishing a repaired fork and that was exactly what verktyg was giving you. His method is the best way to avoid the dreaded binding; prepping a frame and fork prior to installing a headset. It's needed especially after paint! You need to make sure all the flat surfaces in the fork/frame/headset stack are parallel. A hammer and drift is fine, a press is better. Maybe you were upset by verktyg's turn of words or his exclamation points, but he makes great points and in my opinion didn't even use any strong language, especially compared to most on the internet!

Road Fan

Actually I am not trolling. When using this hammer technique you can detect very well when the race is seated and hence when common sense says that no more force is necessary. If the surfaces are all prepared correctly, the HS won't bind. I've installed headsets or parts 30 or 40 times over my history as bike hobbyist and if the seat and the head faces are finished correctly, the steering ends up smooth. It's been better to put my mind around how to do this than to go buy a $60 setter and a rather more expensive mill (at least the one example I could find!). I've bought a mill that can face the head tubes and I think it will align bore the head tube. This time around I actually looked again for tools, since I have four frames to reassemble. I'm not worried about destroying the existing crown race seats on the two Witcombs, I don't intend to use nearly that much force (the hammer only falls by gravity, and I don't raise it very high to limit the striking force), this time or any of the other times. I use hammers kind of delicately.

The frame builder actually said he milled the crown seats, but they don't look as good as I have seen in the past, hence my source of anxiety. Also, he painted them so I had to carve away the paint so I could verify the measurement. I have to reassemble (build) the bicycle, but I was not able to guide the frame builder and review his steps, and he is quite experienced so micro-managing should not have been necessary.

The other times I've built a bike from a frame and parts, I've handled the face/chase/align steps with very reasonable help from the good LBS's in town. But our best shops have closed, or key guys are no longer available. Ann Arbor once had a great local frame builder, with at least two more well-known experts within 100 miles.

I've also today had another experienced guy whom I respect rail at me for, why should you worry about how well the HS will turn if the bike was made in a slapdash French plant in the first place? Didn't need to hear that, either. Answer is, I'm not supporting any not-too-careful European factory guys who built these back in 1970 or so. I'm supporting my friend, who owns these bikes.

cudak888 , Yes, I've gotten past being upset with the painter/builder - some of the problem is with the bike owner as well. He asked be to be in charge and dismantle/remantle, and direct the builder, but when he wanted to know the status he went to the builder not to me, and then would not pass on what the builder told him or what he told the builder. Finally two frames surprised me by arriving at my house - no mutual agreement they are in fact prepared, nor a list of what the builder actually did.

So overall I'm trying to see my own way through this part of the build and deal with the new parts of the problem. I need to verify the face alignments before installing parts. I'm still not convinced I should not buy a pair of short-stack Tange steel headsets and be done with it. Tomorrow I'm going to agaijn canvas the remaining LBSs and this time record who has a good capability in frame preparation. In some of them there is still a person whose capabilities I respect.

cudak888 

Absolutely true. Though some may freak at the idea of a hammer taken to a crown race, it's completely possible to do it correctly without damage, given a careful eye, steady hand, and a properly faced fork with the correct race diameter on it, which is the key to making any crown race seat easy.

Still, I love my piece of rusty Reynolds 531 that I use to bang them in with. Fits and works perfectly, every time

A bad situation, undoubtedly. All the more reason to tread carefully though and get it done right within a reasonable budget. Just remember that idiots quickly become finger-pointers when they pfluck up, because refusing to own up to their stupidity is how they protect themselves.

-Kurt

Road Fan

I'm trying hard not to flame or out the professionals involved. I am experiencing some problems but ultimately the proof for the frame professional and for me is whether credible bicycles can be assembled in this situtation. And that is up to me, to use tech I can access (a good mechanic with the specialized prep tools) or my own resourcefulness and care, such as hammers, files, straightedges, try-square, and calipers. A vise would help, but actually for steer tube end shaping the clamp on my service stand works well and it's clamp can't really damage the steer tube. I only tighten enough to be secure, never tighten as hard as I can.

As I think I said (this thread has a lot of me rambling in it), today I'm going to re-canvas the LBS's and see where I think these frame prep actions can get good attention. I'm also going to ask about availability of used serviceable frame prep tools. Head tube/BB end mills are not too $$ but I already have one from Bicycle Research To be equipped myself I would want a crown race seat milling/cutting tool, a head tube reamer with guides for alignment, and a crown race driver. I already have a headset cup press. Do the Patarek or Ballantine bike repair books give good guidance on performing frame prep?

Other questions: (more to follow)

>Based on inspection of my forks, is it acceptable to cut the seats down to 26.4 mm diameter? I worry that reducing the thickness by 0.3 mm could weaken the fork top connection from crown to steer tube.

repechage

At this point I like your earlier idea of buying cheap Japanese brand headsets and be done with it.
The mental anguish expressed in this thread is totally out of perspective and proportion.

Road Fan

"mental anguish?" PuuuullllllEEEEEZZZe! Save your pejorative comments for your beer buddies.

The core problem has not been to find parts, it's been to get frame prep done competently. I've been talking to several "local" shops, one is emerging as having experience, tooling, and to be serious about crazy projects. I was actually told by a few that we service the mainstream. My task with these bikes is to make them work as sound bicycles frame to mechanisms, not to make them into vintage classic handbuilt showpieces.

You seem unwilling to tolerate the thought process related to sorting out the most appropriate solutions, beyond telling someone what to do. Sorry, this is the Internet. Deal with it.

repechage

You made my point.

cudak888 

FFS.



Why are all of the good threads on C&V starting to turn into soiled toilet paper as of late?

-Kurt