It's All About the Bike by Robert Penn Read Free Book Online

armoury of tools: hacksaws, drills, files, wire brushes, bottom bracket taps, head tube reamers, a milling machine, pliers, spanners, ratchets and several things I didn’t recognize. In the centre of the workshop was the jig, a small piece of scaffolding that holds the tubes in place, to maintain their precise alignment while they are being welded together.
    â€˜First, we cut the tubes roughly to length,’ Jason said, pulling one from the box and holding it up. ‘I’ve already done this. Now I’m going to mitre the ends of the tubes so they butt up perfectly . . . so there’s maximum metal contact at the joint and we get a really good weld.’
    Suddenly the room was booming with a raucous, metallic noise. Orange sparks were flying out of one corner. Jason was grinding the steel tube down on a huge belt sander.
    â€˜It doesn’t half wear the belts through fast,’ he said, pausing to check the mitre. ‘But it’s that strong this 953, you can’t use a metal cutter on it. You can’t use a lathe or a mill to do this, so wepretty much hand-built this sand-belt mitring machine. We call it “homebrew”. In the old days, when we built more traditional frames with lugs, the mitre wasn’t quite so important. But with TIG welding, it’s got to be immaculate.’
    I had thought about a frame made the traditional way, using steel lugs that fit over the ends of the tubes like sockets, and join them together. From the late nineteenth century until the 1970s — most of the history of the bicycle — it was the preferred way to build high-end steel frames, largely because the lugs meant tubes could be thinner and lighter. Advances in metallurgy, as well as the introduction of TIG and MIG welding processes, have effectively negated any advantage. Today, to have a lugged frame is basically a cosmetic decision. It generally costs a bit more, too.
    From the 1930s to the 1960s, British frame-builders obsessed about lugs. It was perhaps the vestige of a refined aesthetic that had prevailed among British artisans since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. A bespoke bicycle workshop would have employed one frame-builder, a painter and the filer, who handfiled standard steel lugs into ornate objects of art. The sheer beauty of a builder’s lugs became the benchmark of his craftsmanship.
    Many British builders were known for their outstanding lugged steel frames, but one marque stood out in the attempts to beautify the bicycle — Hetchins. Russian-born Hyman Hetchin fled the Revolution in 1917, aged 26, and began selling bicycles out of his north London home in the 1920s. He sold frames made by local builders, one of whom was Jack Denny. Denny believed longer lugs would make a stronger frame; and longer lugs meant more room for decoration. Denny and Hetchin also patented curly seat and chain stays. The bikes, with model names like
Nulli Secundus
and
Magnum Opus II,
were crowned with rococo ‘lugs of distinction’. Today, Hetchins frames are highly sought afterby collectors, though the froufrou lugwork certainly isn’t to everyone’s taste.

    The obsession with lugs has recently crossed the Atlantic. Several of the revered American artisans making bespoke bicycles today were apprenticed in London and Milan in the 1970s. They took the ailing tradition of lug-cutting back and nursed it. The new wave of young, idealistic US frame-builders has embraced it. In Britain, you only read about lug-cutters in the obituary pages on vintage bicycle collectors’ websites.
    When the firework display was over, Jason began preparing the jig. He worked quickly but there was an ease even in his hastiest movements. His hands appeared to be pre-programmed. They were often completing one job while his mind was clearly attending to the next. I wondered if this was a mark of his artisanship. It was certainly a reflection of his experience: he builds five frames a