Originally Posted by
rhpdxbikes
My Guess is it started out as something else and the reason it has that cruddy paint job is to cover the weld/sweats/brazing that took place to make it a track bike. Its only painted, for the most part, where welding would have been done, I would guess it was an old road bike chopped and sized to fit him and to give track dropouts.
Wrong.
Roadbikes in the US in the 30's didn't have derailleurs. It is a track bike, it has an internal headset, so the paint is not over top of the cups. I have seen similar paint jobs although this could have been done later.
vjp