Through a customer of mine I was alerted to a garage sale of the inventory of an older bike frame builder. He was part time at building and offered painting and repairs but he must have also sold frame building supplies as he had a big inventory of lugs, crowns and BB shells along with some dropouts. There's no way he would have used all of this stuff for his own frames as he really didn't concentrate on frame building but treated as a sideline to his wholesale distributorship. He sold small parts and accessories and there were a lot of forgotten and obsolete products in boxes that had been invaded by rats. It was a pretty smelly mess but the many lugs and BB's were worth the trip and all the crawling around in the rat turds and dust.
My plan is to build a few traditional lugged frames every year and offer them up as the 'Legacy' frames- not so much my legacy but that of the builders that came before me. When people such as Hugh Enochs and Albert Eisentraut were starting to build there were little or no places in the USA to buy supplies so stuff like you see here in the photos had to be sourced directly from Europe.
The few frames that I build from this stuff will be very much in the style of the '60's and '70's when these bits were current. If you are looking for something for big tires, disc brakes or internal cables, these frames will not be for you. If you want a frame with traditional materials and have proper old parts for a retro build you'll be happy with what you get. These frames will be built in the style of the time when I first started building but with my 40+ years experience, they should be much better built than what I was doing back then. Everything down to the brazing rod and cable guides will be from this inventory and I will only substitute when I run out of a particular tube or fitting. Most of the tubing I have is Reynolds 531 but there is some Columbus as well. I will have the first prototype ( Pretty funny to call it that ..) back from the painter in a few weeks.
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