Browning.

There's Manufrance.

I don't know if St. Etienne bicycles were made at the same factory as the Manufacture D'armes de St. Etienne weapons or if they are just named for the town. Mavic and Vitus are from St. Etienne.

As was covered in another thread, the fuselage of the Hawker Hurricane was made from steel tubing (and the wings on early models). Could have been Reynolds but I was unable to find proof.

The Spitfire's engine mounts and wing spars were made by Reynolds but they were from a new defense plant that worked with aluminum, not bicycle tubing.

Those aircraft had guns in them, though they weren't actually guns themselves.

HD- Bicycles, Motorcycles and shell casings

Guns are to guys as sewing machines are to gals.....Dayton built bicycles

As far as their motorcycles are concerned the two versions I heard were "Bas*ard Stopped Again" and "Best Scrap Available".

How about forging. Both major gun parts and many bicycle components, particularly in the age when steel cranksets and many other components on bikes, were forged steel. IIRC Raleigh was advertised as the all steel bicycle at one time. Even now the best aluminum bike components are forged so far as I know.

In many countries gun manufacturers were the high tech manufacturers in the 19th century and as the bicycle developed it was natural for such companies, with their metal working skills, to get involved with bicycle manufacturing too.

Browning guns were almost all made by other manufacturers. Browning was a designer and his designs were made by Winchester, Colt and Remington among others. Most of the guns sold under the Browning name were made by FN in Belgium and later by other manufacturers.

Schwinn should have made tractors, or Howitzers. :D

Yep, between 1892 and 1903.

IIRC Col. Pope (Columbia) had his first bicycles manufactured by the Weed Sewing Machine Company.

Marlin bought some rebadged bikes for distribution in 1937 but decided not to get into manufacture and got out of the bike business altogether when 303 had been sold.

I remember researching Miyata’s history after buying my first and, back then, not knowing anything about them, started coming across some articles about their origins. I’m just going off recollections; but, my firm impression is that the company we know as Miyata was originally an arms manufacturer, possibly Maeda I’m thinking. Back in the post WWII days when good-hearted America saw the practicality of not repeating what happened after WWI when the ‘winners’ did nothing to support the vanquished Germans leading to the conditions, 25 years later, that lead to WWII. Truman initiated the Marshal Plan that rebuilt Germany by converting their military industrial complex into civilian productions. I know this is getting long, but I’ll try to complete the thought here. I believe there was a less publicized program to rebuild Japan that Miyata benefited from. What products would a war ravaged country be in need of, especially in the devastated Tokyo after the carpet bombing? I’m a company that makes gun barrels that require rifled tubing. I wonder what I could do with this expertise that my country is in great need of. To my knowledge, Miyata is the only bike frame manufacturer that drew their tubing. I think that if one did the research, you could find a similar connection to Columbus. The Italians make some of the best guns in the world. Oh yeah, some of the best tubing too!

Just a stream-of-thought ramble, sorry.

No sorry. An excellent analysis.

I always wanted one of the Messerschmidt three wheeled cars (two in front, one in back). At the gym tonight talked to a guy who had a three wheeled motorcycle based on the same design.

I wonder if Miyata's gun barrel manufacturing (rifling) had an influence on their channeled tubing?

Funny how Capitalism works, you never know what your going to get; guns, bikes, three-wheeled Messerschmidts. One day we could either have a bike that could take out a city, or a bomb that rides like a Bianchi reparto Corse.

I was wondering too. I never had a chance to look in the Miyata 1000's tubing to see if it was 'rifled' i.e. spiral; but I did check out the Columbus TSX frame I had and it was.

I have a set of golf club irons that were forged by S&W. Snake Eyes MB-1's.

Kabinenrollers are pretty cool. The Heinkel Kabine is pretty interesting too.

On the yellowjersey site there were some pictures of some Westwood style rims for sale marked Beretta.

Different driveline design but the wheel layout dates back at least to the Morgan 3 wheelers which were made for a very long time. IMO a much better, and more stable, three wheeler design than the HD Servicar.

Someone mentioned Pope having bikes made by a sewing machine manufacturer. In the post Civil War era the skilled small to medium size parts machining and forging companies were sewing machine makers, gun makers and watch makers. Waltham got into bikes as well as watches.

Heavy industry was locomotives, steam engines and farm equipment makers who seem to have ignored the bicycle so far as I know.

Of course, Reynolds has close ties to the military, especially British fighter planes, but also other weaponry.

From Classic Rendezvous: http://www.classicrendezvous.com/Bri...ds_history.htm

An brief excerpt from the link above: "During the War, Reynolds produced tubing for everything from the Spitfire to the PIAT (Britain's answer to the Bazooka) to flame thrower barrels. In all, Reynolds produced 77,000,000 feet (14,602 miles) of alloy tubing and 53,000,000 feet (10,038 miles) of steel tubing. All this was produced by a labor force that at War's height numbered less than 2,100 employees. Following the ending of the War Reynolds scaled back its production considerably and in 1947 they formed a separate company, "Reynolds Light Alloys", to handle the production of aluminum tubing."

They didn't? :eek:

Find yourself a Messerschmidt, it's more reliable.

It seems that during WWII, there is quite a few manufacturers of various things that moved to arms manufacture - case in point - Oldsmobile was contracted by the US government to build airplane guns - specifically M2-M4 37mm wing-mount cannons.

case in point:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5NxfDS94YA