Be careful for what you don't wish for

Every year from Christmas until Jan. 1st I effectively close the shop and work on 'fun' projects. A lot of times these projects start out fun and after awhile turn into something else, maybe not as much fun as anticipated. I can deal with that- building bike frames is a bit of work and building one just for the heck of it feels like even more work, even if it isn't. In the case of this weeks project, it felt like more work and it really was more work. It became so much work that at one point I felt like it was not worth the effort . Let me tell you how this particular frame project went to shit in a new and unanticipated way.

Let me give you the backstory. I am part of a generation of frame builders who started in the '70's. There are not many of us left-seems like building bicycle frames does not make for a long life-most of my similar aged builder brethren are gone , most due to heart failure. I have a theory why this happens but I won't tell it to you because I'm not a doctor and I could totally be wrong. Regardless, I have been to several shop/estate sales because of a builder either quitting or dying. I wind up with a lot of materials-some of it easily identifiable, some of it a total mystery.....but steel is steel, right ? Maybe in most cases but not this week. 

In the '80's a company named 'Excell' started making and marketing what they said was the lightest and strongest steel tubes on the planet. I don't remember what all their engineering data was but what I do remember were all the horror stories from builders I knew who tried using it. Word was that it was nearly impossible to cut and that once you built your frame, good luck aligning it- the tubes would not yield, not even a little bit. The steel was so hard  that it was brittle. I stayed the hell away from Excell tubing for decades- that is until yesterday.

What you see in the photos is a lugged frame I built. I just pulled random tubing out of unmarked boxes and chose the tubes based on the wall thickness and length. I knew that the main tubes were Tange prestige and Columbus but I didn't know what the seat and chain stays were-all I knew was they were very light. The stays had the right specs for the build so I used them. They seemed a bit hard to cut but I was able to do it with little trouble. I finished the frame and was only left with the alignment as the last task. I noticed that the rear stays were out much more than any frame I had built in many years. What I didn't know was that the socket for the seat tube on the BB shell was off-center. Maybe this is why this particular  BB shell had not been used but the hands it had passed through in the last 40-50 years of its existence. So, not knowing this I merrily set about banging on the rear end of the bike with the rubber mallet- standard procedure , at least in my shop. No matter how many times I hit the stays, they would not move. I was dumbfounded-I had never run across this kind of stiffness in a steel tube ever. I decided that I had to swing the mallet harder- and harder....still, the stays would not budge. Finally I gave it a really hard whack and hear a pop'. I knew that something had cracked-it was the seat stay. The chain stay on the same side had a buckle in it as well-I was clueless why this frame was acting in a way I had never encountered. 

Very annoyed, I left the shop and went home for lunch, then I went for a short ride. I really thought that fixing this frame was too much work to be worth the effort-I would have to replace the whole rear triangle. I was not up for that-I returned to the shop later but did no further work on the frame and just hung it up. That night I went to sleep not quite knowing what to do- it was the weekend when I typically avoid going to the shop. I woke up the next morning and decided that It was best to fix this frame and take a good look at the tubing that I was replacing. After a good look I figured out that the stays were Excell- the super-hard, super-stiff , brittle as hell tubing that came and went years ago. I though to myself "Why the hell would anyone keep this crap around when they know how unusable it was ? And the off-center BB shell-why would anyone keep a piece of crap like that around ? Is it the curse of the trade that frame builders can't seem to throw anything away, even if it is totally useless ? 

I know one thing for sure-I'm going to look through the boxes of tubing I have and some of the boxes of BB shells and toss all of it that hints of Excell or out-of-spec. What if this was not a little year end project but a customer's frame ? What if the front tubes were Excell and broke because of their brittle nature and the rider got hurt or worse ? Stuff that is made and marketed that is absolutely no good and a product of bullshit engineering and untruthful marketing pisses me off in a very big way-this weekend was a mess because of some stuff in my shop that other builders had -but didn't use- and they were not around to tell me why they didn't use it. They also were not around to tell me why they had not disposed of it. Well, they might not have disposed of it but you know sure as hell that I will -with pleasure.