[MENTION=28766]jet sanchEz[/MENTION], thank you. As soon as I get back to the Shreve I’ll get a photo of the other goodies. And maybe get of shot of me in my Tommasini jersey for good measure. I should write the factory, but I’ve seen at least one case where they gave a year range that was clearly much too early. My impression is that 30-40 years ago they just didn’t keep detailed records, just as they didn’t use serial numbers. All of which to me adds to the romance of the brand. Plus I’m pretty confident in T-Mar’s dating cues. On the other hand, what's the harm in asking?
Bill, thank you for the great, concise tutorial. One question, how do you handle flats? Oh, another question - what were the photos the Tommasini family member requested?
Thanks, Brent. I’m not sure what would have happened to this bike if I hadn’t gotten it, so that definitely adds to my satisfaction. It may well have been knocked around in a humid, sweltering storage building for a few years and then eventually been trashed. And thanks, OTS, too.
DD, your recent Colnago build resonated with me in part because of the process I went through in researching and bringing this bike back. I had a drawing teacher who spoke of his drawings (his preferred art form) not as works of art, or as creations, but as “the record of a process.” He went through a different process for each one, not quite sure where it would end until he got there. That’s kind of how I think of this bike, as a record of not only it’s creation, by Irio Tommasini’s shop, and the Campy engineers and the creators of the other parts of the bike, but also as a record of the building up by the original owner, and a record of the life it’s lived. And now my little adjustments are part of that record.
I still think about repainting it back to a beautiful metallic red, but I agree, now that it’s cleaned up and shined up and functional again, it looks pretty damned cool. I'm pretty settled on just getting the replacement Columbus decals and reapplying those. And I've used that misspelling trick on some collectables before -- you can get some great deals if you're lucky.