[QUOTE=Road Fan;10799787]Quality of Bob Jackson frames will at least be on a par with Mercian. I have a friend in Ohio who is thinking of going with Franklin, and he has a very discerning eye. Neither he nor I are yet impressed with the Velo Orange frames due to two things. One is the dog-leg shape of the fork blades. The other is that an LBS was disappointed with the weight of an off the shelf Randonneur he got to spend some time with. But perhaps that won't matter so much for a tourer. I'm not sure if V-O talks about weight, and tourers need some extra strength anyway.
Yeah .... Jack Franklin is a really good, under the radar type of guy who's been building and repairing frames for a long time. I wouldn't hesitate to use his services again. He bailed me out of a jam when I bought a used Rivendell Bombadil that was all f'd up when I got it. The rear wheel couldn't be centered or go into the driveside dropout. I took it to a frame builder in Pittsburgh who thought it would be a simple job, but found out something odd about it. He couldn't fix it. I then took it to Jack, who has a digital alignment table, and the frame was 6mm off center in the front end, and one chainstay was brazed 1mm too short! (originally built by Waterford) With the chainstay like it was, the rear wheel would never have fit correctly. I had him re-braze the chainstay, align the frame and repaint it. All this at a reasonable price.
BTW ... Zinn's start at $2000. Ouch.