Vol. 2, Issue 58 - July / August 2015

Peter, I was very interested when you referred to the good old days, in the Newsletter. I have very fond memories of these days, and would like to share some with you.

Yorkshire was one of the strongest League areas in the early days and on a Sunday tea time in Skipton there would be a meeting of all the factions on the way home after a long ride in the Yorkshire Dales.  Amongst the throng of sometimes in excess of 50/70 riders would be the N.C.U. International riders, such as Des & Brian Robinson, Gordon (Tiny) Thomas, and Peter Procter, along with the League Independents, including Ken Russell, Ken Jowett, Geoff Clark, & Don Wilson.  There would also be many of the top Yorkshire time triallists.  The good humour and the banter when I started riding in the early 50s was interspersed with accounts of some of the bitterness which had occurred in the 40s when the Union & The R.T.T.C. had been adamant that Massed Start racing on the open road must never be allowed to happen. Thank goodness they were wrong.  I remember that in the sprint for the Skipton sign there were some pretty good skirmishes. The Union track riders and the R.T.T.C. boys on fixed gear were very adept at swinging their saddlebags into you, and we couldn’t respond with our mussettes. Amazingly, I never remember any one ever “Biting the Tarmac”.

After the final cafe stop in Skipton, we went our separate ways, the Bradford, Huddersfield, Halifax, & Wakefield boys contesting the final sprint of the day, down the 1/4 mile cobbled road in the Centre of Keighley, and then for my club, The Halifax Imperial Wheelers, we had the  long climb of the Ingrow, up and out of Keighley, leading onto the climb through Denholme to an altitude of 800 feet and then a long cobbled descent into our home town.

“I was interested to read the comments on mix and match brakes, particularly Mafac centre pulls, as I have used these brakes almost exclusively since 1958, and I am their No.1 fan.

From the 1950s to 1980s I was a member of the San Fairy Ann CC and Southborough Wheelers in Kent and, it is true, the side pull brakes available in the 50s and 60s were poor stoppers , especially in the wet. The Mafac Racer cured all this and were advertised in Ron Kitching’s 1959 Everything Cycling as requiring only “One finger sufficient!” to stop. Although Ron was prone to exaggeration, I think he was probably right in this case. Apart from the equal pull of the two arms, and the excellent studded brake blocks, their great advantage was the huge vertical adjustment of the brake shoes, up to 20mm, or ¾”, enhanced by brake shoe studs which allowed further angled adjustment up or down.

Mafac Racers will fit almost any lightweight, where other brakes fail, and they are working effectively on bikes as diverse as my 1950 Holdsworth with 26” wheels to my 1980 Carlton Clubman, which has very gappy clearances with 700c rims.

The one big disadvantage of Mafacs were their lever hoods, half rubbers in various colours, which were uncomfortable unless one wrapped vast quantities of cloth tape around them. The mix and match solution in many Kent and South London clubs was to substitute the excellent all black full rubber Universal brake hoods. These had the added advantages of a chunky, effective cable adjuster built into the metal body, rather than in the rubber hood on the Mafac, and very comfortable inside edges to the levers, kind on the fingers! These parts could all be purchased from George Reed’s discount cycle shop in South London. George was quite a character, nearly blind, and identified the bike parts by feel. Mafac levers were improved in the 1970s when they introduced their drilled levers with black all round hoods, thereby curing the problem.

The other disadvantage of the Mafac centre-pull was the very spongy centre pull hanger fitted to the headset, only remedied when Weinmann introduced their centre pull brake with the very solid brake hanger. I have Pivo and G.B. stems drilled to take a centre-pull cable, but I was not a fan of these, as they also gave spongy braking.

I also have a pair of later Mafac centre pulls with orthodox  brake shoe fittings, i.e. parallel to the rims instead of at right angles, which I assume was a cheaper sports version.

I wanted to give you details of my old Harry Quinn road bike that I have recently restored.

I purchased this frame direct from Harry Quinn in Liverpool in the very late 70’s and I recall being advised that it used to be the weapon of choice for Phil Thomas who was the Pro road race champion in 1983.

I raced the wheels off this bike in the 80’s, crits and time trials mid week then road race on the Sunday. Week in, week out and it was the training machine off season too. So one day cruising along nicely in the bunch the bike all went very peculiar with the feeling that I had punctured both tubs. I looked down and to my horror saw that the seat tube had become detached from the bottom bracket assembly. I was just swinging in the breeze and I very gently made it back to the race HQ.

At home I stripped the bike down and said I would send the frame off to the council dump next week. Well I never did chuck the frame away, it was nostalgia I suppose, I had had a few wins on the bike so it just sat in the corner of the garage gathering dust and homing spiders.

Now a few years forward and with the great increase in interest in machines of old plus my ever improving skills with the welding torch and spraygun I spied my old Harry Quinn and thought I should really do something about this old boy. Well, to condense about a month’s worth of work into a few sentences this is what I did. First off was getting the thing shot-blasted and boy was that seat tube ever rusty. I sliced the tube about an inch above the bottom bracket where the corrosion was bad then cut a section of thin wall tubing and having filed it so it sat on the bottom bracket without any gaps pulled the seat tube to one side, slipped the new bit of tube up into the seat tube and when everything was looking nice I brazed the whole lot up.

It took about two days of filing to get everything smooth enough for paint and I then got on with the other repairs the frame needed. I had crashed on the bike a few times and the top tube was comprehensively dented. Too much just for car type body filler so I had to lead fill the worst of the dents and thick applications of primer filler took care of the rest. At last I could get some paint on it and I chose a gun metal shade of base and clear, I believe it is a Ford colour, and Porsche India red panels. Decals came from Mr Lloyd and four coats of lacquer finished the job off. I always mix in lots of hardener so I can get on with the build up without too much delay.

The build up started with some unknown forks I took off a frame to replace with carbon ones but they fit and they are chrome. I’m a Campagnolo man, all my bikes are Campag, so the Quinn has Delta brakes, super record seat pin and Cinelli saddle. Fully polished Record 54/42 chainset, Nuovo Record rear mech with billet sealed bearing jockey wheels and Record front mech. Cinelli record stem and Cinelli 65 bars, my favourite, and the piece de resistance, 50th anniversary hubs on Mavic CD sprints. Oh Campag Record pedals and Christophe clips as well.

I am so so pleased I didn’t dispose of this frame as it rides beautifully, it’s really fast and I hope you agree, looks great.

You wondered on your lovely website what blocking might be. It was also known by the less lovely name of butchering.

If it was done correctly, the leather was un-riveted from the back of the saddle, which as your site rightly says tended to  be square and flat in those days. The cantle was put in a vice and then squeezed, to make it rounder and make the saddle narrower. That also had the effect of making the saddle snugger to ride, because it nestled into your bum better.

Rounding the cantle meant that the holes in the leather no longer quite matched those in the cantle. They weren’t far out but they still couldn’t be used. Instead, the holes had to be widened to make a match. That in turn meant that the original narrow rivets wouldn’t fit because they’d go right through the widened hole.

The technique was to use a copper rivet with a wide head. That could be hammered still wider until it covered the original hole and its extension.

In those years, riders yearned to have saddles of the sort they saw on the bikes of continental pros. Not only did they have big, and obviously big, rivets but they were also shallower and more rounded, the sides rolling in beneath the sitting area.

That was the butchering. Once the saddle had been fitted to the modified cantle, the leather was subjected to whatever fancy potion the tradesman doing the job swore was best. It may be soaked in oil, even wine. It was often hammered to make it more supple. The surplus leather was cut off, exposing the nose, removing bits that stuck over the back of the cantle and often trimming the saddle lengthways along its edges.

It would then be bound with tape to give the saddle what was sometimes called a dried-kipper look, as near to tube-like as a saddle can be. And then it was handed back, with a price ticket, and a rider kept it and rode it for the rest of his life.

It took declining sales in the face of newer plastic saddles to push Brooks, then a conservative organisation, into reacting. The result was the Brooks Professional saddle, better leather (I’m told), a hopeless attempt at mimicking the shape of the continental butchered saddles, and with cosmetic, wider rivets that had no function beyond copying what on the pros’ saddles was a necessity.

And then artificial saddles took over and the old traditions and envies were blown away along with wool jerseys and soggy bike shoes.   I hope that helps. You should be able to find pictures of continental butchered saddles without problem.