Okay I'll tell you but first you have to listen to a history lesson about bilaminate construction. Claude Butler was a famous brand in England from the thirties through the fifties. He pioneered (or at least championed) this process where decorative sleeves were cut out and placed onto the ends of tubes and then the whole mess was fillet brazed together. Claude himself wasn't a framebuilder but rather had 4 or 5 guys churning out a highly rated product. His business was probably similar to Serotta or Independent Fabrications. Some of the most famous British builders got their start at Claude Butler. You can read more about his history and his techniques on the Classic Rendezvous or classiclightweights.co.uk sites. If I understand it right, he rolled flat sheet into the sleeves that were cut out (or cut out a pattern on a flat sheet that was then rolled into sleeves). Part of his motive was that conventional blank lugs were difficult to get at times so he developed a technique that didn’t require him to be dependent on iffy supplies. He eventually sold his business in the mid fifties (fancy bicycles became less popular and rumor had it he had a drinking problem) and I heard he was a gas station attendant when I was apprenticing in England in 1975.

Unless you are Dave Bohm (who has the rollers to do this) in the States we do this with slip tubes. A tube with a wall thickness of .058" will slip nicely with just enough clearance for silver brazing over a tube with an OD 1/8" smaller. A wall of .058” is too thick so it needs to be turned down on a lathe to about half that thickness. This construction can be done 3 basic ways with variations. The first way the slip tubes are mitered and brass fillet brazed together to form a lug and then the frame is silver brazed together. The second way is the tubes can be cut out and brazed onto the ends of the tubes and both of them can be mitered together. Then they are fillet brazed into a frame. The third way is that the sleeves are cut out and mitered separately from the tubes. They are slide together and all the pieces are brazed together at one time.

You can see Herbie’s latest creation in Philadelphia at the show Steve Bilenky is putting on the end of October. He has been designing and cutting out the lug sleeves all summer. He just started to braze them up into a frame last week. He helps me teach my framebuilding classes. He is an illustration of how the best learn. I tried to find the right place(s) to learn from in Europe (when America was just starting to have framebuilders) and brought those techniques back with me. After adding my input, he is able to take that knowledge and add his own twists to it.

Doug Fattic
Niles, Michigan