On Sunday, May 25, 2014 8:04:22 AM UTC-7, ascpgh wrote: > > A friend was just telling me about some conversations he was having at the > Cirque du Cyclism the other weekend that ran along the same lines. > > He's had a Della Santa frame that he has held as precious for years and > finally got it all together only to find it just not right. He went to a > fitting and discovered that it has too long a top tube in its basic > geometry that apparently moves him beyond the envelope of the original > design expectation when he tried to adjust by stem extension or seat > position/seat post options. > Is this the builder's fault? It sounds like your friend bought a bike that was too big for him. Who fitted him initially? Unless your friend's "fit" changed over those years he had the frame but didn't built up, the fitter should have known that the top tube and "basic geometry," whatever that means, was right for him!
> What seems to be the thread common to Mertz, DiNucci and some of the other > old builders present was workmanship presumed of all frames. The attention > to detail let on that whoever filed a lug cared deeply, perhaps beyond the > quantification of monetary value of their obsessive expense of time on > such. Today we are able to crunch numbers so easily, to enumerate the > exchange necessary for costs that we've moved beyond the intrinsic value of > craftsmanship to heel to the MBAs and finance departments who seek parody > of gain for expenses quantifiable. So perhaps today it is business modeling > that limits the obsession able to be administered to make even a well > designed steel frame still seem less special than one from the '60s or > '70s, back when everything took more time and that spendthrift filing lugs > may have been well spent while waiting for the phone to ring or the mail to > arrive. > I'm confused by who you are talking about?! Yes, some mfrs build bikes that are designed to be "mass-marketed" and are not as finely tuned as frames from years back. But today's custom frame builders are putting out some of the best designed and made frames. Go look at frames by any custom builder like Bruce Gordon, Roland Della Santa, Brent Steelman, Mark Nobilette, Sasha White/Vanilla, Richard Sachs to name a few and you will see frames are that equal to or many cases better than those made in the 60s and 70s! > My friend saw a very early Tom Ritchey that was made for one of those > builder's wife which he said was breathtaking in such details. > Yes, if you're lucky enough to get a frame actually build by Tom, it will be well done. But that shouldn't be compared to any of his production frames made in Taiwan/China. Different markets, different price range and different qualities! Good Luck! > Andy Cheatham > Pittsburgh > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
