which builders still pin their lugs?
 

I went to NAHBS to investigate having a custom lugged steel frameset made up for me .Looking over the bikes of Dave Ybarrola, Tom Palermo, & Richard Sachs, I was pleased to find that they are still pinning their frames in the classic tradition. What other current framebuilders are using pinned construction?

tia.

k

I don't know the answer to who pins, but don't confuse pinning with quality, it's just a building method. Lots of different ways to build a frame, and no particular way is "best" per say.

+1 It's jut the means of getting from the set-up to the brazing without having it move on you.

can anyone here just answer a simple question? <g>

Fred Parr pins his frames.

You can find lots of other builders who pin if you do some research, such as searching the framebuilders list and/or search at frameforum.net

http://search.bikelist.org/?SearchSt...=framebuilders

Sachs, I think is the extreme porcupine view of pinning, it gets him what he wants, others use different ways, most common I see is one per socket. Or they tack, I always was concerned about tacking as it starts the flux to melt, but I took some joints apart that I did that way, first by cutting then, then heating and I could not see any problem, I think with silver, pinning would give more confidence that the joint remained in its designed position. For me anyway.

I do not think that pinning is required for a good frame or good alignment.

I do wish that tubes came with better alignment form the mill though.

"can anyone here just answer a simple question? <g>"

Why bother the simple mind will fail to understand it. I do, however, have a complete list of modern American novelists who use paperclips in the assembly of their manuscripts.

i think theres a guy here in Mass, Zanconato, who also pins his lugs.

thanx maddog,
had looked over Zank's site many times but couldn't confirm his assembly practices from the site. his sense of style matches my own and i've heard very good things of his work.

best,
k

I only read books that were originally typed on a typewriter myself. Not so into the whole 'paperclip' clique. They catch on the flap of my courier bag when I ride my fixie down to the BUG.

Why do you care about pinning ?? As others have mentioned, it's just part of the method for some guys. I've never found a need. Similar to the paperclip analogy, would you shop for a carpenter based on the type of wood clamp he uses ?? It has no effect on the finished product. The reason for these questioning replies are actually to help you, by way of making sure you're looking at the important stuff.

well ,sport,

why do you care what criteria i use to narrow or broaden my selection of framebuilders?

i worked as a certified pressure vessel welder for many years and think there's a reasonable rationale for the use of pinning such as:

-having only to heat the tube once per lug and therefore a reduced chance of overheating, & distortion of the materials,
- that pinning removes an inherently 'dirty' step in assembly which could potentially introduce impurities and porosities during the final brazing operation
- that pinning allows for more easily adjusting of tube alignment during the assembly process
-and that pinning offers the possibilty of lower stresses to be built into the frame as the structure is joined.

is that important? to me, yes.

can a high quality frame be built using tacking techniques? of course.

will pinning make for a better built frame? maybe, maybe not, depending on the skills of the builder.

is pinning my prime criteria in choosing a custom builder? not at all. but it does tell me something about that builder's philosophies. and guess what...I'll ask them directly why they choose to build as they do.

so once again, why do you even care what I do and why wasn't I taken to task for my want of lugged construction instead? where's that charmingly smug chastisement for my wanting a steel frame, eh?

Well as the big bass said of the fluorescent lime green plastic worm it had just swallowed: "I just didn't want to see something like that get started in the lake". We feel that way about completely bogus assumptions about quality or tradition.

People may get called out on, say, lugs if they say something implying that other build methods are inferior in some way. Or if they say "given I am going to the Andes and need the strongest frame possible (or one with radically novel geometry), therefore it has to be a lugged frame... We just want to be helpful. But if they say they like the way they look well who can argue with that (OK I have found ways but enough with the details for now).

The original claim in your post was that pinning is a classic tradition, which is one way to characterize nailing, I guess. I'm going to have to mention that to my framing friends, like maybe we need a t-shirt or something. Actually timber framing is another art that has elevated the insertion of a wooden pin into a joint as something akin to fitting the sound post in a violin.

"i worked as a certified pressure vessel welder for many years and think there's a reasonable rationale for the use of pinning such as:"

You must have gone through a lot of lugs and pins in that trade...

"-having only to heat the tube once per lug and therefore a reduced chance of overheating, & distortion of the materials,"

What you want to find is a guy with a zero chance of doing either whether he is using pins or hanging from the ceiling in a tutu. That's the real classic tradition, learning to do it right regardless of what it takes. The stuff that doesn't show in your nail bag. I'd rather find a guy who can be trusted not to set the bike on fire regardless of how he is stabilizing his joint.

- that pinning removes an inherently 'dirty' step in assembly which could potentially introduce impurities and porosities during the final brazing operation

It isn't inherently dirty, as you point out, it can be successfully done one way or another. It's all using enough flux and temp control.

- that pinning allows for more easily adjusting of tube alignment during the assembly process

Who cares how easy it is? The whole thing about being a pro is that everything is easy for you, as in the phrase "he makes it look easy".

-and that pinning offers the possibility of lower stresses to be built into the frame as the structure is joined.

Well that is certainly one way to describe driving an oversized pin into an undersized hole in a casting.

Hey, I want to go firmly on record as one of those people who doesn't care what criterion you use to select your frame builder. Just so long as a new mythology doesn't get started.

i trust your PeterPan existence is a comfortable one.
the one mythology that i see here is that of your infallable 'pro' that has such control and mastery of his craft that he needs never check his work, that his skill & reputation alone are enuf to ensure that every individual tube and lug he handles will yield to his mastery- frame after frame,join after join.
no wonder this board is as dead as it is. right up there with the gizmo and lighting forum .

ps- thanks to those that helped. appreciated muchly.

ciao.
k



Peterpan1 :

Why use pins or tacks ? Set up the joint in a jog, braze it, and move on to the next one. Just 1 heating there.

There was a discussion on the technical merits of pinning a few years ago on the Framebuilder's list and Brian Baylis, arguably one of the top builders in the world, faced off so to speak against Richard Sach's, who's frame back-order time speaks for itself. Baylis does not pin, and Sachs does. Basically the discussion ended in a mutual exchange of acceptance - to each their own. Bottom line: it's quality that counts and there is more than one way to skin a cat.

http://www.classicrendezvous.com/USA/Baylis_main.htm

thanks N,
for both your considered response and the link. I agree with that assessment entirely. My background would still have me prefer a pinned frameset on an intellectual level but ultimately, I'll always side with the craftsman that knows his way around his profession and has the experience & aptitude to consistantly realise his art regardless of (or precisely due to) his chosen methods & tools. To date, my shortlist includes practitioners of both build "camps".

best,
k

I'm pretty sure that Giant, Kinesis and most high-end trailer hitch manufacturers would heartily agree.

you can say that again atmo.


ps this is a silly thread and a strange preoccupation. pinning, in and of itself,
means as little as jig built, or silver brazed, or any of the pop culture terms
that folk co-opt from the trade glossary.
i pin my frames because it's the easiest, most seamless and effortless way to
take a complete and as-yet unbrazed frame from a fixture, and have it ready to
braze free-hand so that the 1) the prescribed geometry and alignment stay
true, and 2) the parts are brazed to each other without clamps and hardware
restraining them down. brazing in a fixture is taboo, and i'd only recommend
it if you were in high volume situation - and even then, i'd recommend it only
at gunpoint atmo.
e-RICHIE©™®
http://www.richardsachs.com
http://rscyclocross.blogspot.com
Richard Sachs Cycles
No.9, North Main Street
Chester, CT 06412 USA

I've been working on my Arpan bicycle low-gravity bicycle. I noticed in one of the joints, there is a hole right through the lug and the tube. Not sure why it's there, either for assembly, or some unknown widget was supposed to attach there. In either case, you might consider if the folks there at Arpan pin some or all of these joints.

which builders still pin their lugs?
 

Checkout the framebuilder Mondonico. Antonio Mondonico pinned all his frames. Antonio retired last year and his son Mauro Mondonico has taken over manufaturing. Not sure if Mauro is carrying on the tradition. There is a good supply of the original pinned Mondonico frames around. Go to http://www.torelli.com/ for tech specs and a dealer list.

"i trust your PeterPan existence is a comfortable one.
the one mythology that i see here is that of your infallable 'pro' that has such control and mastery of his craft that he needs never check his work, that his skill & reputation alone are enuf to ensure that every individual tube and lug he handles will yield to his mastery- frame after frame,join after join."

Brazing is basic workie stuff. The problem we have is that when something gets elevated to an unreal level, then I come along and say a pro is a pro and what pros do is they don't make mistakes, maybe that sounds outrageous. The mistake isn't mine, the mistake is in putting the thing on a pedestal in the first place.

Take a far scarried example, solo climbing hard rock climbs. If you have ever seen this done by a really good athlete, it makes walking on water look mundane. But anyway, one day before he did much soloing, Peter Croft wanted to do more laps on a really long 5.8 climb, not too tough. He couldn't get the laps he wanted of the 800 footer because all the rope work slowed him down. So a pal asked him if he climbed the route 1000 times, how often would he fall off. Peter had to answer "never". So he started soloing the route several times a morning. That was just for the aerobics. He has gone on to do stuff unroped that just can't be believe. At that time, 5.8 would be a good cut off point. I knew many "climbers" who never led a 5.8. in their whole careers. Pros make the impossible look easy. Your chance of learning to braze a lug without distortion is way higher than learning to climb an 800 foot 5.8 unroped. Some stuff is harder than other stuff.

"has such control and mastery of his craft that he needs never check his work"

I don't know about that, someone must have mispoke. Hand work is normally a process of checking all the time. My main thing is woodwork, I expect to be able to cut to the line every time, but I have to watch it happen with every stroke of the saw. If the cut was jigged like a saw with a power feed, it's just feed and forget. But pros don't make huge messes of stuff they have been doing for decades. And if something goes wrong they know how to save it almost all the time.

"that his skill & reputation alone are enuf"

Have you ever made anything? Reputation comes from making the parts perfectly, it doesn't make them perfectly for you!!!

" to ensure that every individual tube and lug he handles will yield"

Well at least with metal the stuff is all the same. You see one tube of X tubing, and you have pretty much seen them all. We aren't talking about the struggle of good and evil here....

"to his mastery"

Do you know what "mastery" is? It is what the master produces every day. The Master Craftsman is a title given to people who do an apprenticeship, work on through the upper stages of their craft, and become masters. (In many places in the world this is a legal title, that is required for certain trades and has responsabilities attached. Apparently some euro countries have some such process for frame building.) It isn't just a word. It has a specific meaning for a trade. Yeah, and damn straight the master doesn't make mistakes (99.99% of the 19 time out of 20). Over here though, if you want to call yourself a Master Framebuilder there probably isn't any law being broken.

As a woodworker, one of my favorite tapes, libraries can get it, is Dovetailing a Drawer, by Franz Klausz. If you know a drawer you know it has four sides and a bottom. In a dovetailed drawer the parts are interlocked in the 4 corners with dovetails cut by hand (in this case) that meet seamlessly. Most people who see this video, their jaws drop. But the most amazing thing is that Franz bills 20 minutes of labor a drawer. That includes; taking the dimensions from the carcase; all the machine prep for the wood to bring it to finalish dimensions; layout of joints; the cutting by hand of all the joints, minimum of 50 saw cuts and all the waste chiseled out by hand; assembly and glue-up; instalation of the bottom; and when dry planing to the final fit. Franz is a master, but being fast like that and flawless was expected of apprentices. As Franz says, "hand work is production!" The idea that pros are trying to bend stuff to their will is just a beginer rambling. Is that the way you make your living, just an endless series of struggles to get the job done, barely within your competance? OK then.

oh my....not sure what to make of your meandering diatribe.

anywhoo...... I gotta ask....
was Croft one of your climbing partners?








.... I didn't think so.