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

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.

Now that we seem to have many of the real experts on steel/lugged vintage framebuilders chiming in, can anyone tell me more about the reputation of Marnati? I recently bought a Marnati bike that I'm guessing is from the early to mid 80's given the original components (Campy SR with Cobalto brakes). It looks great to me - full chrome underneath nice paint, some nice lug detailing, etc. - but I'm no expert. Haven't been able to find much on the web about Marnati.

Unfortunately the frame is a bit too small for me, so I'm probably going to sell it and use the components to build up a larger vintage Italian frame, maybe a Colnago Super or Mexico since I already have a Super and like the way it rides.

Marnati was a Milan based Italian builder who built for several teams (Benotto, Gios etc) and for pro riders – his frames must have been at least sound – no, I am teasing, the ones I have seen pics of were really nice though I have never seen any in the flesh...

Geez, Joe, where do you get this stuff. "Gitane" means "Gypsy" in French, and the cigarette company and bicycle company are not the same. In 1960 the bicycle company changed its name to Micmo, but continued to produce Gitane bicycles (among other brands). Many (possibly all) of Anquetil's Gitane race frames were built by Paris builder Bernard Carre, who built for a lot of pros. There were some very nicely made Gitane frames, but they tend to be from an earlier period, when few made it into the US, and from later, after LeMond rode to prominence. Gitane's reputation in the US unfortunately rests on it's bike-boom era US imports. (I happen to own a Gitane from the 60's that is not top-tier but nonetheless pretty cool, in it's own way, and decently made.)
Incidentally, Anquetil rode "Gitane" bikes to only two of his five Tour victories, and for three seasons in total.

Umberto Marnati was also a mechanic and builder at Legnano, I believe, before starting his own atelier. His son took over the operation after his death.

well i read about the cigarette company on the internet somewhere. say, you know the gitane i would love to get is that one fignon and lemond rode when they were on the same team. i just love the way that one looks. never seen that one available to the public. thanks for the infor. on gitame and anquital. i still think that guy was the best-right behind merckx and coppi

Hillary,
Thanks for the insight into not only De Rosa, but Raleigh and a few other marques.
It isn't often that George Longstaff gets mentioned here on bike forums.
I find it interesting that the discussion on single builders (as opposed to a production
shop, or single builder with 'apprentices') all seem to revolve around Italian builders.
There are more than a few similar threads in the CR list archives.
My experience is that the Dutch builders tended to be smaller one man shops( Zieleman) , or
family businesses (i.e RIH ). Do you have any comment on this? Am I wrong in my assumption
of the Dutch builders being closer to the mythical one man builder labouring over a jig?

Marty

another guy i want to mention is ron cooper from england. i hear he does and always has made all of his frames himself.

So what?

So does Paul Sadoff of Rock Lobster Cycles. I have the 13th frame he built, all by himself, and VERY high quality craftsmanship.

About Confentes, I believe that J. Boyer helped Mario when he worked on the Peninsula.

You need to stop listening to voices. Do some homework. Take an english writing class so you can punctuate.