On Fri, 2009-12-11 at 08:02 -0800, CycloFiend wrote: > I think the inherent flaw is the idea of a "gorgeous" tig-welded bicycle > frame. Personally, I don't see anything wrong with that method of frame > building, but they've never struck me as particularly good looking.
I have a titanium Santana with welded joints that are almost indistinguishable from fillet brazing. Between those gorgeous welds and the high polish of the titanium, the bike looks better than chromed fillet brazed steel. But, that's definitely an exception, and I've never seen steel welding that looked like that. I've seen some welded steel bikes with beads that are so small and uniform as to be virtually invisible. The tubes simply look as though they've been placed together with no obvious visible reason for them to stay together. Whether a bike like that is "gorgeous" or not depends, I think, on the paint job. The welds do nothing to detract from it; nor do they dictate the design of the paint, the way lugs often do. A panel paint job can look quite nice on a welded bike, for example. Given the right accessories, so too can a single solid color; from a distance, with some colors, you couldn't notice lug detail or even the presence of lugs, so there's no difference between the visual impact of a lugged or a welded frame. I think many of the welded Tournesols look every bit as gorgeous as the lugged ones, for example. They tend to have fairly low key paint (black or taupe) and the fenders and other silver bits predominate. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bu...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
