How many frames do you think De Rosa produced say, during the US "bike boom?" Where are all these "more than 2 hundred" frames?
This is where your photo is out of place, IMO. You use it as evidence that De Rosa was not the "boutique builder" it is claimed to have been. But that photo proves nothing about the period that really matters, when the lugs were still hand-filed. That picture documents one period in De Rosa's history, and so it proves nothing regarding that history as a whole. I'm not claiming that Ugo personally built every frame, at any period except perhaps the very earliest in De Rosa history. Even then, he may well have had helpers. But that photo you gleefully deride as evidence that De Rosa was not a small boutique shop (lotek's post to which you were responding), says nothing about the period before 1980. How many De Rosas from that period do you see come up for sale? All the evidence is that they were building very few frames throughout the 70's. De Rosa could probably have brazed them all himself, or at least the vast majority. Not saying he did, just that he could. You seem to know little about De Rosa in the 60's and 70's for someone willing to be dismissive of the idea that De Rosa was not a "boutique builder," as lotek suggests. Filtering out the propaganda, the preponderance of the evidence I've encountered from knowlegeable sources suggests that De Rosa could be described as a "boutique builder" right through the 70's (otherwise, where are all the bikes? - 60's and 70's De Rosas are relatively few and far between. And if not "boutique," why so much variation frame-to-frame?) It aso suggests that he was far more "hands on" with the bikes far longer that Masi and Colnago, to cite two "less-boutique" operations. Ugo could certainly have brazed the majority of frames during that period, from what we can tell of De Rosas production (again, not a lot of frames/bikes out there, relatively speaking.) Ugo's hands do suggest that he was directly involved in bike building at least until fairly recently (as per Citoyen du Monde), and he probably did personally produce some of the early TIG frames (both steel and aluminum.) This all stands in stark contrast to guys like Colnago, whose non-building kicked off this thread.
Incidentally, Ugo does not seem to relish the duties of "company owner," and indeed seems to have delegated them as thoroughly as possible, other than obligatory media photos and show appearances. Unlike Colnago, he has never enjoyed being the "front man" for his bikes or sought the limelight. This in itself should suggest that Ugo is not particularly interested in propagandizing his bikes, though certainly there are marketing folks anxious to do so. Ugo has always prefered working quietly in the back to wearing a suit and tie at the front - which in itself sets him apart from many of the other more ambitious producers.
I'm the last guy to oversubscribe to the vaunted "Italian bike myth" that seems to be the windmill for so many tilters here. All the more reason to actually try to sort the wheat from the chaff, rather than waving photos and crying "propaganda!" You're all about filtering propaganda but your tool for doing so is one photo? (Produced by De Rosa I might add - if only they'd known they were handing you a smoking gun.)

A lot of the better known builders were, of course, clustered around Milan and Verona, and some did achieve regional and national fame. Then, too, Italy is not of a piece - many more of these small-scale builders exist(ed) in the north than in the south. But you're correct of course about the many smaller builders, some of whom, like Marnati, built for pro teams. To your very good list I'd add, for starters, Fossati, Marastoni, Branca (who built Filotex team bikes), and the elusive and hugely influential Giuseppe Pela. And yeah, Picchio Specials really are pretty special.

This is an interesting thread. I'm so glad though that I collect and ride Bottecchias. At least I won't be devistated if I find out my bike was built by an Italian plumber moonlighting as a frame builder :D

The whole thing about Italian plumbers becoming framebuilders is clearly apocryphal, since plumbing undoubtedle pays much better. Wouldbe moonlighting Italian plumbers would do much better to simply work overtime. (And why does plumbing come in for so little respect as a craft, anyway?)

Kommisar89, I also own a Bottecchia Squadra, custombuilt for me (a la misura) by Carnielli (Bottecchia) Reparto Corse in 1990. Let me tell you that those guys working there were just as fine builders as any
other "famous" name in the business in Italy. Actually, one of the chief builders was a guy called Brandazzi and he was bought over by Francesco Moser when he started his own frame building operation in Trento in the early/mid 80ies. Don´t look down on these guys just beacuse they are not well known.

You´re right. Most builders were situated in the northern part of Italy, the traditional cycling regions of Piemonte, Lombardia, Veneto and Toscana. And thank you for mentioning Giuseppe Pela, another great builder, but there were so many of them just 20 years ago!
Today I am afraid most of them are gone, it´s not possible to make a living building frames today, they become to expensive for most cyclists. And do remember that ALL of these guys, from Colnago to Pela, are/were in this business for the money, not to try to be an artist like Michelangelo or something. They wanted to make a living from it, they were craftsmen and as soon as it did´nt pay they ceased and did something else.
Btw, I´d love to see your Picchio Special, there are´nt many of those around anymore, even in Italy!

How about Billato? hehe I have one of those also (of course branded as something else as almost all Billatos were/are), built by his sons of course, AFAIK they're still operating though I doubt they do much steel these days.

well, i think of all the frame builders, mario confente is seen today to be cyclings michalangelo no?

Depends on what that definition is.

He might have been an excellent framebuilder, but from what I've seen, not unusually superior to any other framebuilder, back in the day, pushing out frames of similar caliber (i.e., lots of fine filing, pantographing, and panache).

I'd venture to say that the aura surrounding his name (and frames) is primarily due to the fact that he passed on at a relatively young age, not that his work vastly outshined that of anyone else in the business. Frankly - and forgive me if this sounds blunt - I believe most of this aura was manufactured by name-droppers who seized Confente's death as a means of turning the bikes into something of exclusive snob-value - as if his tragic end was something out of a television soap opera.

-Kurt

Confente was a special builder in that he understood that it was possible to get people to pay real money for a frame. When he was alive he was selling bikes at prices that were higher than almost anybody else. Without him, teh boutique builders in the US might not exist. His workmanship was also better than average and he was more competent than most at coming up with geometries that worked for the rider. Do I believe that all of these positives translate into the value given to his frame today? Not really. Would I put his bikes on a par with a Cinelli? No, I believe his to be superior. I also agree that there was some aura building with Confente by speculators. He is one of the more important builders of the US.

The first guy that Moser called was a builder by the name of Marastoni. Marastoni turned down the gig because Moser's brothers were interested in quantity and not quality. Being a builder for Moser has never been considered a particularly important calling card.

Mike I know that you want to add something useful but please don't name drop if you are not fully aware of the people who you are writing about. A few of the names listed never built anything (Montelatici for one, but likely two others too), they were simply nameplates for a shop. Others were not persons but rather multiple generations of a family or multi-person teams (Picchio, Marnati, Grandis, Chesini, Sannino). Others were apprentices who developed their trade under real master whose shadow they never surpassed (Freschi under Brambilla and Pogliaghi). Marinoni did not emigrate as a framebuilder. Pegoretti is not a one man show...

say, does anyone out there cooberate(?) the guy that said brian bayliss is the guy that actually built the confente bikes. well maybe in la but when mario moved up to monterey i am assuming he would have built those himself-no?

and I still have no idea who built my Zilioli frame...(probably one of the big builders and Zilioli puts his name on it.)

But I know who built and painted my Davidson. Bill Davidson himself. I brought it into his shop in Seattle one time many years after I had him make it. He looked it over because he saw it was one of his early frames and had his own personal touches on it.

Joe,
I seriously doubt Brian Baylis built all of Mario's frames.
but why don't you post on CR list and ask Brian? he is a frequent poster over there.

LOL...I was just kidding about that. I used to work as a plumbers helper for my uncle back when I was in school many years ago. It's a fine profession and I bet it does pay a lot better than apprentice frame builder :)

I wonder when they started doing that. Their bikes from the 60's and 70's don't get as much respect in C&V circles. The frames of the 80's and early 90's do look a lot cleaner. Then again, I have no complaints about my '72.

BTW, that was probably you I was thinking of. I seem to remember you posting something about that.

speaking of bottecchias i just picked up an adr team replica with slx and croce d aune grouppo. stunning bike. ps do any of you retro guys know how to adjust the croce d aune rear derailleur?? i cant get in sync and i dont think it can be set for friction like the shimanos of that period. just thought id ask because no one in the maintenance section seems to know about this short lived group. thanks

Not exactly "one man". His workshop is producing around 400 frames a year, Richard Sachs, around 50.

vjp

CdM, sorry about that. I just wanted to name a bunch of guys that most cyclists probably have never heard of to give an example of how many there were once. But I must ask, I know that Marinoni came to Canada as a racer but did´nt he have some framebuilding experience that he brought with him from Italy?
And the last I heard of Pegoretti he was sick with cancer and hardly built anything at all but here on the forum I find out that he produces some 400 frames/year, that is interesting. Well, then I agree with you that he certainly is´nt a one man show.

Well, now Billato is something quite different. They are big contract builders to many different brands and names, almost like a large factory. But they also produced frames under their own name. Another big builder along the same line was called Tecnotrat. There were several others too and I am sure both Picchio and Citoyen du Monde knows more about those.

Marinoni apprenticed at Colnago, under Rossin.

Actually, I think closer to 600 frames a year go out under Pegoretti's name. Definitely not a one-man operation, but on the high end he does produce some of the best custom work anywhere, IMO, and is definitely one of the "masters."

Am I safe to assume my Rossin was actually built by Rossin? It would suck to learn Ernesto built it:roflmao2:

is rossin still alive? i have slx square bottom bracket model with super record probably 85 model. rides great. did he make that? is this a mass produced frame? seen a few around but not many

I think one of the things this thread points up is that a lot of excellent frames were produced in the rather large part of the continuum between "did he make that?" at one end and "is this a mass produced frame?" at the other.

This shows what I was trying to say earlier. We'd all like to think out favorite builder is in the workshop with his torch building frames and we want to believe he built the very frame we're riding.

In reality a lone builder can only build so many frames during a single year and that number isnt many.

We can guess all we want at how many frames our favorite builders built but thats all we can do, guess. Its probably less than we think and different that what the builders tell us. Remember, they want us to think they held the torch, otherwise there's no panache.

And, as I said earlier, you overstated your case. For one thing, you just now stated what "We'd all like to think ... " You don't speak for "all of us." Some of us know that, for example, Masi made considerable use of subcontractors, and in some cases you can even tell who those folks likely were. Doesn't devalue Masis at all, as far as I can tell, and they still have plenty of "panache." The folks who pay big money for the better examples are in fact the very folks who know this stuff. You apparently think all vintage bike collectors suffer from the same degree of collective naivete. I can assure you that's not the case. There are also some of us who know enough about De Rosa to know De Rosa was a small-volume, custom-oriented shop longer than many other "big-name" Italian producers, and Ugo himself was more directly involved for longer in the actual building of the frames than, say, Masi or Colnago. I think there's real "value" in that - and it's reflected in the sales prices of the bikes. It informs my opinion of De Rosa and of the bikes. In your hast to make your point, you seem to have missed the fact that there is a big difference between a master builder who carefully oversees the work in his shop and "OK's" each frame before it goes out with his name on it, and one who simply subcontracts and never sees what winds up arriving at a distributor or retailer. You derided the idea that De Rosa was a "boutique" (i.e. small-volume, high-quality, custom-oriented, hand-craft) shop with a photo that was itself a piece of the very "propaganda" you decry. How do you know the real "propaganda" in that brochure wasn't the fact that they're trying to portray De Rosa as the "savvy businessman" heading up his firm, when in fact they had to drag him out of his smock and out of the back room in order to pose him that way? While very knowledgeable concerning some aspects of vintage bikedom, you clearly lack knowledge of De Rosa in particular. And you still haven't directly responded to the points I made in my last post. I have no interest in feuding over this - I understand your basic point, and if you read my posts carefully, I think you'll see I'm substantially in accord with it. But trying to make it using De Rosa as your example, without more specificity about the period of De Rosa history you were referring to, badly missed the mark. I seriously doubt that the number of bikes De Rosa personally built is "less than" I think, and in addition, I have no illusions about their quality. Some are exquisite; some are frankly pretty mediocre. But I would respectfully suggest doing some real homework before trying to myth-bust by posting a single piece of "evidence."

I'd just like to throw in a few slightly random thoughts into this discussion.

A good experienced framebuilder can build a frame in a day whether they are building from a vice with straight edges and mitreing with a file (like Tom Board did in the UK,) or all jigged and tooled up (like Paul Washington did (and still does?) for the Brian Rourke frames). So 200 frames a year is not unreasonable. And both methods can build excellent frames...

1970s pressed lug De Rosa frames are rare - on Ebay worldwide, not just Ebay.com there have been 16 De Rosas of this age for sale in the last three years... of which 11 were on .com, I may of course have missed the odd one. Compare this with 1970s Colnagos or even Masis... De Rosas were built in really small quantities until the 80s. The introduction of cast lugs and BB shell probably helped to increase production but even then the numbers produced were not large. There was then another increase towards the end of the 80s and beginning of the 90s.

Quality does vary with almost all framebuilders - like De Rosa, Tom Board's frames vary from stunning to mediocre - its a very rare framebuilder who will build all stunningly good frames especially with the older pressed lugs that needed more skill. But experience of building a lot, pretty quickly can often contribute to building a better frame. Britain's George Longstaff who built many tandem, trike and tandem trike frames as well as solo bike frames reckoned that experience from building good quantities of frames significantly improved the quality of his frames both in the build and the design... I do really question the notion that somebody who builds very small numbers of frames really ever gets that experience which I would suggest is very important.

Another question which perhaps should be raised is whether a heroic framebuilder on his own will build better frames than a co-operative team effort. Certainly there is a good feeling from having a frame that you know is crafted by one pair of hands but that is quite an emotional and/or romantic response which mostly belongs to collectors such as ourselves. All the pro riders I have talked to or seen interviews with certainly do not think of their frames they ride as anything other than as tools – even Eddy Merckx who was incredibly fickle, it was all about getting a comfortable and efficient position. But perhaps there was just the tiniest part of him that wanted a frame built by one person and just maybe, that was reason for switching from Colnago to De Rosa – or perhaps it was the clash of two large egos that prompted the change!

But getting back to frame-building as a co-operative team effort. The Raleigh SBDU unit at Ilkeston was I suspect much more of a team effort than many with a dynamic head in Gerald O'Donavan who never actually built frames himself... He was an ideas' man and an engineer who could coordinate and drive a team to produce some of the best frames of the late 1970s... I think that it would have been rare for one builder to have built a whole frameset at Ilkeston. And even in smaller builders' shops such as Longstaff in the late 90s George did the brazing and layout drawings, with others doing the tube mitreing, lug preparation and final finishing and checking.

An interesting side note is that the Team mechanic to the 1970s Ti-Raleigh team, Jan LeGrand, was a framebuilder (Presto) and he used to come over to supervise and help in the construction of the Team frames at the Ilkeston works. The oversize seastay cap he introduced on the Team frames was apparently one of the details Raleigh adopted from him for the production frames. This feature was not introduced on Ilkeston frames until the beginning of 1977.

Finally, should we concern ourselves to the nth degree about the quality of the frame construction? A superbly built frame is nice but I suspect is a luxury – its how a frame performs over its designed life that is important. It should not fail – but very few steel frames break... There, I am certain are plenty of poorly mitred frames with overheated tubes and blobby brazed lugs that are still being ridden; they will not ride differently to one that is perfectly built with the same tubing and dimensions. Even frames which are not perfectly aligned may well ride perfectly fine... Peugeot PX10 build quality often looked seriously suspect... The perfectly built frame may give its rider more pleasure ... but that will be in part at least just in the rider's head. The other part will be down to how the frame looks and the pride that it imparts.

speaking of that, since gitane was a cigarette company and not anyones name, i wonder who built all of those winning frames starting with anquitel and ending with lemond? i guess that it was dozens of different french frame builders such as pepe limongi. the ones i have seen for sale that arent team bikes such as the tour de france models all seem very poorly made. i think the gitane bikes make for public buying were all poorly made.