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  • It's wearing what I recognise as late 30's frame fittings, with regards to the long mudguard mounts on the stays, pump pegs and those dropouts, which I'm expecting to have pointy ends on them (not pointy Osgear tabs, just the ends of the dropouts). I don't know this as fact, but I thought a lot of that stuff hadn't been standardised by the late 20's - which includes the bottom bracket, headset and lugs which all look like standard parts on your frame. I thought a lot of that stuff was still made in the factory to their own specs until at least the mid 30's.

    Earlsfield bit might not be far off. A lot of the classic South London bike shops we're familiar with weren't set up as far back as that. EF Russ was one of the earliest but even he was 30's. It might well have been that there was a works of some description in Earlsfield who were also able to make bicycles.

  • I don't know this as fact, but I thought a lot of that stuff hadn't been standardised by the late 20's - which includes the bottom bracket, headset and lugs which all look like standard parts on your frame.

    I believe the frame parts you mention are all Chater Lea on this frame, which I guess is what Charlie meant by 'Chater lightweight'. I don't know when the practice began, but I've seen references to BSA or Chater components frames earlier than 1929.

    Incidentally, I had a number of little mods done before I painted the frame. These included mudguard eyes on the rear fork ends (for a rack), Sturmey control cable stop on the top tube and a new seatstay bridge. Unfortunately (as mentioned elsewhere) I failed to remove the lamp boss on the front forks. In fact the front forks seem to be non original since the numbers don't correspond - something I only noticed yesterday - it's only too easy to come to false conclusions with something as old as this and which has seen a lot of use.

    The weight of the main frame, excluding bearings, is about 4lbs 12 ozs, around 8ozs more than a classic butted 531 frame of this size.

    As for Earlsfield, there was a strong frame building tradition in South London and I guess that any Norwood Paragonian going north of the river for a new frame would have been seen as a traitor!

  • could it be Reynolds High Manganese tubing? I had an EF Russ that was apparently this (the tubing sticker said it was, but I think it may have been repainted so couldn't say for sure). From what I remember the weight was slightly heavier than a 531 frame of it's size, so that would seem to match yours frames weight

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