on 12/11/09 8:29 AM, Steve Palincsar at [email protected] wrote: > 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.
The titanium Ibis frames were in that realm. I don't know if the different nature of ti welding processes lends itself to that, or the knowledge that there won't be paint covering the work. Or that they only let the uber-skilled TIG-welders play with the expensive tubesets. > 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. Those are all good counterpoint examples to my comment. For me, it's lugged or fillet-brazed, followed by TIG-welded. One of the things we all benefit from now is that the folks doing lugged work are all pretty accomplished. I do remember the last Interbike I attended some years ago, where a co-worker and I openly commented that if we had to look at another fat-tubed aluminum frame with toothpaste welds, we'd lose it. I'm not sure I ever recovered from that... ;^) - J -- Jim Edgar [email protected] Cyclofiend Bicycle Photo Galleries - http://www.cyclofiend.com Current Classics - Cross Bikes Singlespeed - Working Bikes Get your photos posted: http://www.cyclofiend.com/guidelines "Maybe a bike, once discarded, pines away year after year for the first hand that steered it, and as it grows old it dreams, in its bike way, of the young roads." -- Robert McCammon, "Boy's Life" -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch?hl=en.
