Originally Posted by
oldbobcat
The fastback seat cluster, "stock" Reynolds fork bend, domed fork and stay ends, and fine workmanship suggest a small US or UK builder. The work is too nice but idiosyncratic for it to be French--the best French bikes were very conventional-looking. The convergence of vertical dropouts, brazed on cable guides, bottle and lever bosses, and lugged construction suggest it was built in the 1980s. I've seen this style of work on Witcomb (US and UK), Roberts, Condor, and Eisentraut. Not to imply that this frame was built by one of these, but these builders were influential or representative of a style.
I'm almost positive this bike was built in the mid-70s. I'm pretty sure I'm right about that because of the reasons in my other post. But it has the narrow Reynolds fork blades that really went out of style in the mid-'70s. Vertical dropouts were in style in the mid-70s, but went back out of style when Campy introduced the short horizontal dropouts (1010b). By the time vertical dropouts were common again, the fork blades would have been fatter.
Since it is in Virginia Beach, I may even know the person who built it, but I don't remember his name. He was a fairly good bike racer. He had a very nice lugless frame that I'm pretty sure he built. He anodized his own parts, and did a very nice job of it.
Originally Posted by
oldbobcat
If it had an R cutout in the bottom bracket, the seller wouldn't be entertaining the idea it might be a DeRosa. And yes, the screw holes on the seat stays are curious. Looks like a nice frame
The seller is just spamming the search engine. The braze ons on the seat stays are for a rack, the way this builds up, the seatstays are very close to each other. The Campy vertical dropouts didn't have eyelets, they were considered a racing dropout. You could get a large washer/nut that would fit through the triangular cutout in the dropout for a rack. I have some in the original packaging. It was not at all common to braze rack eyelets on at that time. I often see brazeons cited as a reason why a frame couldn't be from the '70s. There are two things that were not common before the very late '70s and early '80s. One is that it was rare to see brazeons for two water bottle cages -- I have no idea what we were thinking about that. The other is accommodations under the bottom bracket for the cables. It was also fairly rare to see brake cables through the top tube, but some builders were definitely doing that in the '70s and possibly earlier.