Monthly Archives: March 2017

1990’s Georgena Terry Symmetry

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A Terry Symmetry frame, built up to my specifications.

About 8 years ago I bid on a NOS 1990’s Terry Symmetry steel frame on eBay.  I was at that time searching for the perfect bike to fill the gap left by my crashed (in 1999) 1976 Centurion Pro Tour.  I had purchased and ridden quite a few bikes since then, but none of them “took”.  I won the auction for the Terry frame, but when it arrived, I saw that one of the downtube shifter bosses was damaged, and perhaps that was why the frame had never been built.  The seller was shocked that he hadn’t noticed this, and he reimbursed me for the costs I incurred to have the frame repaired.

Damaged shifter boss

Nice hand lettering on the Georgena Terry logos

I took the frame to Oregon Manifest winner Tony Pereira, who re-brazed a new downtube shifter boss.  That involved removing the existing lavender sparkle paint in the immediate area around the shifter braze-ons.  His painter was not able to match the paint exactly, so instead came up with the perfect solution of using an accent color.  You can see in the above photos the new blue accent color and the perfectly executed hand-lettering of the Georgena Terry logos.  Now my Terry frame sports a custom paint job!

Georgena Terry is an engineer by training.  She is an avid cyclist, and after the frustration of not finding a bicycle appropriate for smaller cyclists, she began building bicycle frames in her basement, and by 1985 introduced the first steel Terry hand-built bicycle, designed specifically for the dimensions and stature of women’s bodies.  If you don’t know anything about her, you’ll be amazed by this video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDRbinNduhM

If we use the term “womankind” to signify all human beings, as is always done with the term “mankind”  then we would have bicycles sized for such beings – who are on average about 5’4″ in height.  Such bicycles would have appropriately sized wheels (probably 26 inch or smaller), and bicycle frame geometry would reflect the correct dimensions of such a human.  Georgena’s initial frame geometry solution was to keep the big 700c wheel at the back, which was the industry standard at the time, and to use a smaller wheel on the front – a 24 incher.  This meant that the steel frame for the rider could be quite large, with a hefty headtube, but still be “as fast” as any other bike out there due to the 700c rear wheel.

Georgena Terry Classic – courtesy of georgenaterry.com

While I am one of those cyclists that prefers the look of a bicycle with the same sized wheels front and rear, this design proved wildly successful and womankind was pleased, as finally they had bikes to fit their bodies.  Since then, Georgena has researched the anatomy and physiology of women riders, and has incorporated her findings into her latest endeavor:  Hand built steel bicycles – both custom and off the shelf, built by Waterford and engineered by Georgena, having sold her interest in Terry Precision Bicycles back in 2009. All of the bikes she builds now feature the same sized wheels front and rear (559s usually), plus many frames designed with a sloping top tube.  They are typically built with Waterford OS2 double butted steel. Her bicycles have some unique characteristics:  large head tube, very little BB drop, steep seat tube angle, slack head tube angle, vertical drop outs, long chainstays, and minimal fork rake. Some of these characteristics are not necessarily what I seek in a bike frame, yet the Terry Symmetry that I ride regularly is one of my most comfortable and treasured bicycles!

One of my theories about this bike’s amazing comfort is the large head tube – made possible by the almost negligible bottom bracket drop of 35 mm.  The frame is “square” meaning that the seat tube and top tube are the same length – 51 cm.  With the minimal drop, there’s a high bottom bracket -about 28 cm.  You’d think I would hate this frame, but instead, having all that steel (Tange tubing which is TIG welded) under me helps to absorb road shock, and is much more flexible than a smaller frame would be. The frame is a bit tall for me – but, who cares?  I often ride pretty tall frames. The most important measurement for frame comfort is the top tube.  In this case, it’s only 51 cm – much shorter than many “smaller” frames, and that’s why I feel so relaxed on this bike – my hands naturally connect with my Nitto Rando bars with no effort at all.

I set this bike up with some of my favorite components:  Shimano bar end shifters, Shimano side pull brakes, Shimano brake levers, and my 1984 Shimano 600 crankset and front derailleur (taken off my old Davidson) which apparently will never wear out!  I ordered a Harris custom 8 speed cassette after riding the bike for a while with an off the shelf unit.

I built the wheels myself (Mavic X221 32 hole rims on Shimano hubs), converting the bike from its original 650c wheel size to 559, and after years of service my wheels have never gone out of true.  Because this bike has minimal clearance (it was built in the sad “racing” days of yore), I needed to mount my fenders over the top of the fork and rear brake bridge.  I cut up an ancient Bluemels fender set which was pretty long in the tooth.  But, the fenders are holding up well.  Recently, I switched out my p-clamps on the front fork (which had no eyelets), for a Velo Orange fender bracket.  The bracket cleans up the look on the front end, but makes front wheel removal much more finicky. I use Panasonic Panaracer Tourguard folders on this bike which have been comfortable and reliable.  Georgena Terry is now recommending Compass Elk Pass 559 Road Tires for her bikes (also made by Panasonic), so I may try those out whenever the Panaracer’s wear out.  But, meanwhile, I will continue to enjoy this wonderful bicycle which I always look forward to riding.

 

1947 Camille Daudon – Frame Details

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My 1947 Camille Daudon bicycle, custom built for Irene Faberge Gunst, is currently in a state of disassembly, so this seems a perfect time to share some details of the frame’s construction.

While I have some information about this bike from the previous owner, I wasn’t sure about the steel tubing.  Because the previous owner had re-chromed the frame, all the original decals and transfers were lost.  So, I was delighted to see this VITUS logo on the steerer tube when I removed the fork.  This logo probably means that all the frame tubes are Vitus – a quality steel tubing made by the French company Atelier de la Rive.

The work done to create this frame is far beyond anything you would ever see today, except from a custom builder.  The creases in the chainstays, to provide clearance for the crankset and the wheels are beautifully executed.  And, the sloping downtube connection to the seat-tube is one of my favorite designs for mixte bikes that use a single, rather than double, sloping top tube.  This type of robust brazing firms up the frame, and gives the mixte bike better handling characteristics.  Peter Wiegle has continued this concept on the mixte frames he has built.

Pinned chainstays

Another interesting feature are the pins used to secure the chain stays, as can be seen by peering inside the bottom bracket shell.  Pinning the tubes was a method used by a number of builders of this era, and is even continued today by Mercian, whose process involves using a brick oven to heat the tubes for brazing.  I don’t know whether Camille Daudon used this heating process, as the only tubes which are pinned in this frame are the chainstays.

The finish work on the stays is beyond anything I normally see – simply extraordinary.

This frame has only a few braze-ons -the shifter mount, pump pegs, and shifter and brake cable routing.  Most notably, there are no braze-ons for a dynamo nor for a chain guard.  Since this bike was designed for commuting and city riding in San Francisco, that seems odd to me.

1947 Camille Daudon mixte, prior to re-chroming

Prior to being re-chromed, the frame looked as above.  As you can see, the chrome was seriously compromised.  Chroming a bicycle frame is a harsh process that may not yield the results you are looking for.  It is very labor intensive, and will remove some brazing material from the frame.  It is essential that the frame be thoroughly cleaned and the old plating removed before re-chroming.

The previous owner thought that he had prepared the frame correctly for the chroming process, but unfortunately a small section of the drive side seat stay developed a hole during the re-chroming, due to incorrect preparation.  This is an area of frame construction where failures can develop.  However, in this case it looks like the combination of incorrect preparation, along with the harshness of the re-chroming process itself, caused this hole to develop. While it is a small flaw, it’s something to take note of.

I haven’t decided yet whether I will try to re-create the Daudon logos which were original to the frame, as shown in the above photo.  I love seeing such a large head tube on a smaller frame such as this, which should provide for a comfortable riding experience.

Best of all about this disassembly process was seeing the codes engraved on the fork and rear dropouts – “471” which makes me think that this was the very first bicycle off the line from Daudon’s shop in 1947.  A nice, and interesting,  thought.

Frame dimensions:

Seat tube:  50 cm

Top Tube -effective:  52.5 cm

Wheelbase:  102.5 cm

Frame Weight:  5 pounds, 15 ounces

Material: Vitus steel tubing

Removing a Stuck Stronglight Crankset

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I have gotten underway with “restoring” the 1947 Camille Daudon bicycle in my collection.  Because the bike is so rare, I will only be using the gentlest techniques to bring the bike back to a rideable condition (though it will not be ridden regularly due to its rarity), as well as to make sure that any mechanical or maintenance issues are addressed so that the bike will continue to last through the ages.  So, as I was carefully disassembling this bike, it came time to take off the crankset and remove the bottom bracket.

Like other Stronglight cranksets of this era, the left side crank bolt is reverse threaded.  The dustcaps were missing, but I was hopeful that the crankarm threads were good.  Hope springs eternal, as they say.

When my J. A. Stein Stronglight crankpuller would not thread into either crankarm, I started to feel worried.  I stopped all my work and took to the internet to do a little research.  While the Park Tool site declares that any crank arm with damaged threads should be tossed out, I continued my search for guidance while rolling my eyes in disgust at such bad advice from Park Tool.  Sheldon Brown recommends using an automotive gear puller in the event that you can’t use the crank arm threads.  Before I pursued that route, I decided to try another idea, which was to thread a T A crankpuller into the crankarms, and possibly chase the threads to bring them back to life.

Stronglight threads are only slightly larger than T A threads (23.35 vs. 23 mm).  So, my first thought was to generously lubricate the crankarm threads and then try to thread in the T A crank extractor.  The T A extractor easily threaded into the crankarms on both sides. I then tried threading in the Stronglight extractor, hoping that the threads had been rejuvenated by the T A extractor.  Unfortunately, the Stronglight crankpuller would still not thread into the crank arms.  So, then I decided to use the T A extractor to remove the crank arms.

Fortunately, I was successful.  It didn’t want to use a lot of torque to bring the arms off of the spindle, for fear of further damaging the threads.  As it turned out, the arms came off quite easily.  When I looked at the threads, I didn’t see anything particularly amiss.  So, with a little effort, I may be able to get these threads back to their normal state, by gently chasing them again.

It was nice to see the Camille Daudon’s bottom bracket shell in such great condition.  Another surprise was the 165 mm crank arms – a nice touch for a bike meant for a small rider.  The 42T ring is a Cyclo Rosa – named after Cyclo’s founder’s wife.  The bike is geared with a 4 speed freewheel, and with the 42 tooth ring, offers an appropriate range for city riding. The bike was custom built for Irene Faberge Gunst, who was a Paris native, but was a resident of San Francisco when this bike was ordered as a gift for her by her husband in 1947.  Irene worked as a jeweler in the Faberge studio of her grandfather, and her own Faberge collection was displayed at various museums in the area in the 1960s.  Her bicycle is a piece of art as well, and one that I hope to shepherd into the future.