Before Carbon

Mike Jacoubowsky wrote:
http://tinyurl.com/27os5

More seriously, that's about the scariest thing I've seen on the 'net.

The part I liked best was where he describes how he approached the idea
skeptically and researched it carefully to get the facts before
proceeding.

Barra of France was building welded, oversized tubed aluminuim bikes
back in 1936,
tandems and single bikes, vertical drop outs. I handled a '36 Barra
frame recently
looks a lot like a Cannondale, oversized down tube, ovalized at the BB.
The biken had an aluminuim fork with a double plate crown, very cool.


Bikes are great, people are regularly reinventing the wheel.

Scott G.

Scott G.

wrote:
Barra of France was building welded, oversized tubed aluminuim bikes
back in 1936,
tandems and single bikes, vertical drop outs. I handled a '36 Barra
frame recently
looks a lot like a Cannondale, oversized down tube, ovalized at the BB.
The biken had an aluminuim fork with a double plate crown, very cool.


Bikes are great, people are regularly reinventing the wheel.

Scott G.

Scott G.

thanks for pointing that out! of course, it's /possible/ to weld
aluminum with a gas torch, which is what had to be done back then, but
the problem is that welds are of much poorer quality due to much higher
inclusion counts, gas porosity, etc and consequently have highly
inferior fatigue properties. the alloys for the tube weren't great
welding candidates back then either. not to mention the fact that the
holder of the torch had to be amazingly skilled - aluminum is a great
conductor, so keeping the heat local enough to weld without having huge
chunks of molten metal fall from around the intended weld area takes
almost super-human powers!

that said, if you can post pics of the barra, that would be awesome.

On Tue, 09 Aug 2005 20:45:52 -0700, jim beam
wrote:

wrote:
Barra of France was building welded, oversized tubed aluminuim bikes
back in 1936,
tandems and single bikes, vertical drop outs. I handled a '36 Barra
frame recently
looks a lot like a Cannondale, oversized down tube, ovalized at the BB.
The biken had an aluminuim fork with a double plate crown, very cool.


Bikes are great, people are regularly reinventing the wheel.

Scott G.

Scott G.

thanks for pointing that out! of course, it's /possible/ to weld
aluminum with a gas torch, which is what had to be done back then, but
the problem is that welds are of much poorer quality due to much higher
inclusion counts, gas porosity, etc and consequently have highly
inferior fatigue properties. the alloys for the tube weren't great
welding candidates back then either. not to mention the fact that the
holder of the torch had to be amazingly skilled - aluminum is a great
conductor, so keeping the heat local enough to weld without having huge
chunks of molten metal fall from around the intended weld area takes
almost super-human powers!

that said, if you can post pics of the barra, that would be awesome.

Dear Jim,

Here are some 1940's Barra frame pictures:

http://www.blackbirdsf.org/caminade/similar.html

Carl Fogel

wrote:
On Tue, 09 Aug 2005 20:45:52 -0700, jim beam
wrote:


wrote:

Barra of France was building welded, oversized tubed aluminuim bikes
back in 1936,
tandems and single bikes, vertical drop outs. I handled a '36 Barra
frame recently
looks a lot like a Cannondale, oversized down tube, ovalized at the BB.
The biken had an aluminuim fork with a double plate crown, very cool.


Bikes are great, people are regularly reinventing the wheel.

Scott G.

Scott G.


thanks for pointing that out! of course, it's /possible/ to weld
aluminum with a gas torch, which is what had to be done back then, but
the problem is that welds are of much poorer quality due to much higher
inclusion counts, gas porosity, etc and consequently have highly
inferior fatigue properties. the alloys for the tube weren't great
welding candidates back then either. not to mention the fact that the
holder of the torch had to be amazingly skilled - aluminum is a great
conductor, so keeping the heat local enough to weld without having huge
chunks of molten metal fall from around the intended weld area takes
almost super-human powers!

that said, if you can post pics of the barra, that would be awesome.


Dear Jim,

Here are some 1940's Barra frame pictures:

http://www.blackbirdsf.org/caminade/similar.html

Carl Fogel

truly impressive - vertical dropouts even! great find carl.
interesting how the other aluminum frames went to great lengths to avoid
welding completely though.

On Mon, 08 Aug 2005 02:59:14 GMT, Michael Press wrote:
In article ,
wrote:

http://www.velo-retro.com/peterjohnson.html

Good color. Is it as elegant in person?
What is with the champagne cork?

It's an Australian/French bike, so it has a saddle with champagne corks on
it to keep the flies away.

Jasper