Drillium Dude

IMHO the seat lug is the one area that truly highlights the difference between a good frame and a great one. However, I'm not placing a restriction on quality in this thread - if your bike has a seat lug, and you feel like showing it off, bring it on!

1983 Atala:



1985 Casati:



2002 Bill Davidson:



DD

bulgie 

My circa '89 Davidson:


I wonder if I also made the orange Davidson in DD's post? Could also have been a couple other guys, Bill Davidson not among them of course. Not that there's anything wrong with that! I definitely made this pink* one though.
* the paint company calls it Magenta Pearl.

All DD's examples are gorgeous but the Davidson seems out of balance somehow. I probably just don't like "OS" toptubes, aesthetically. I imprinted on frames with inch TTs at an early age, and I have too little brain plasticity remaining to change, apparently.

Drillium Dude Who made the one with the C engraving?

Mark B

1simplexnut

753 Pro10 ex Peugeot Team machine

gitane

Peugeot PX10 531 with quill stem

Fredo76

Fredo seat lug



Half-wrap-around seat stays, a la Woodrup

merziac

Cinelli



Behringer



Gordon



Strawberry



Bornstein



Paisley



Merz







Paramount

Drillium Dude

I hear you. Lug/tube junctions have always looked to me like a bird swallowing something. Oversized tubing gives the impression this bird's being choked, yet the effect isn't as pronounced from even a short distance.

I've always wondered who might have built my frame. Bob straight up told me it wouldn't be Bill, but hey, Ernesto didn't build my Colnago, either!

This was finished in early 2002 and shown at the Davidson booth at that year's Bike Expo. I was out of the country with the USN and didn't take delivery until a couple months later. A masterpiece. To be absolutely, totally honest, the workmanship on the frame is top-notch, 100%. I mean, I posted the pic of the seat lug junction for a good reason - it's freakin' beautiful! If I were to be really picky, the underside of the fork crown could've received a better finish. The fork was meant to be entirely chromed from the jump, after all. Hand on heart, I've seen better jobs on not a few production frames. But hey, it doesn't affect the handling, and that's the important thing - it rides like a dream. Been wearing it out for the past 9 months straight, the longest I've concentrated on one bike in over 20 years.

The C engraved one is a Casati.

The fishmouth treatment at the seat lug is sublime - I don't think I've ever seen that before outside your contribution previously in the Show your Davidson thread. Did that become a signature move, or a one-off?

Here's a pic in the back of EBB prior to assembly:



DD

Fredo76

Anybody have an Eisentraut?

Some similar feathering going on above.

Or a Colin Laing? In 1976, every Colin Laing frame was built by Colin himself, including painting. I merely mitered tubes with half-round files to the angles needed, and cleaned up lugs, two afternoons a week. Colin was a one-man frame-building machine. Although he had models, like the 'Cleveland Tourer', most were custom-specified, angles, etc.. I once asked him why anyone would want to tour Cleveland, thinking of Ohio, and he looked at me like the simpleton I was, and explained that Cleveland, Ohio, was named after another Cleveland...

Drillium Dude

From a guy who is generally not a fan of le French velos, I believe this has it all: curved and chromed top eye, nicely-finished lug (for a French frame), filled binder ears, and of course the cable guide for the soon-to-go-out-of-fashion centerpull brakes. And let's not forget the pearl white paint

The French-bashing: all in fun

DD

Drillium Dude

Figure I'd better do some damage control in regards to my French comments; everyone has their level of finish/price point and yeah. Anyway, even at higher price points, there are goofs.

Funny I began a thread about seat lugs, in a way. My favorite bike, to be frank, has the least aesthetically pleasing seat cluster of all my bikes. See if you can spot at least three issues in the two photos below:





Still works like a charm for it's intended purposes, though - just like the Pug above. It's all good.

Now, where are those Raleigh Capella lugs...?

DD

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

bulgie 

Who made the pepto-bismol pink one? I swoon — so pretty. DiNucci?

Sactown_Albert 

Love the wraparound seatstay and the serial number lozenge placement on this bike.

Fredo76

You mean the brazing gaps and un-filed transitions? Yes, it looks kind of mass-produced, really. It would be interesting to know how well the tubes fit underneath. I've got a couple of brazing gaps on my own frame, to be honest, but Colin guided me well. "Give it a little more", he would say.

Drillium Dude

Yes on the brazing gaps. The filing issue I always see is the over-filed area in the second photo, about halfway along the lower shoreline. And the non-matching fonts of the "Cs" in Colnago? That's because the drive side top eye originally had no C - I had to mill that in myself with a diamond-tipped Dremel bit. Note I got it a little bit out of proportion to the one on the non-drive side.

So, yeah. But I trust this frame beneath me for anything, and that includes rocks and dirt and sand and hardpack (Cino, in other words).

DD

P!N20

Haven't you heard of Olnago?

nlerner

cocoabeachcrab 

Doug Fattic 

Here are a couple of pictures already on my desktop so I don't have to go looking for them. The 1st one is a close up of a fillet brazed frame one of my framebuilding class students did about 10 years ago. The 2nd one is a picture of a frame I made in '78 or '79. It was given back to me by the owner to resell and use the money for our Ukraine Project. It eventually got painted white pearl with red accents.


student made frame


This is a modified Henry James lug

rccardr 

thinktubes 

mgopack42 

Here are my two:

Apologies for the OS top tube!

Yoshi Kono's workshop's work

SJX426 

I have a thing for bottom bracket shells. Maybe another thread.
As much as I pay attention to seat clusters, I find pictures of them from some bikes missing in the albums.
P1020139 on Flickr
P1000502 on Flickr
2008-06-07 15.42.52 on Flickr
P1000861 on Flickr
WP_20141102_005 on Flickr
P1020908 on Flickr
P1020073 on Flickr

jamesdak 

Davidson Impulse

Duell Vienna

Fishlips (David Kirk)

Lemond Maillot Jaune

Olmo Sanremo

Fuji Opus III

Paletti

PDG Paramount

Pinarello Monviso

Prologue TT

jamesdak 

Serotta CSI

Lemond Maillot Jaune

Giordana XL Super

Giordana XL Super

Miyata 914 SE

Giordana Antares

Basso Gap

Bob Jackson

randyjawa 

I know that I have presented this ugly lug vision before but could not resist, considering the topic of interest in this thread...