The Bicycling World, Vol 54, No 2
Articles in this issue
- The Emblem Mfg. Co. of Angola, N. Y., built by veteran trades-man W. G. Schaak, has quietly grown to an output of close to 15,000 bicycles a year and is rearing a three-story fireproof steel-and-concrete factory 150 by 40 feet.
- Having closed its San Francisco branch, the Pope Mfg. Co. is dividing Coast territory among eight or ten jobbers and dealers; F. C. Merry takes San Francisco and has opened on Golden Gate avenue, while former manager P. H. Bernays has gone into Los Angeles real estate.
- A. E. Griffiths, five years in the employ of E. J. Willis, has been added to the traveling staff of the Reading Standard Cycle Mfg. Co.
- The Reliance Motorcycle Mfg. Co. is moving from Addison, N. Y., to an enlarged new plant at Elmira, N. Y., during the current month.
- The Cycle Manufacturers' Association will next meet on the first Wednesday in November, the 6th, at the Auditorium Annex, Chicago.
- W. L. Loos of John T. Bill & Co., the Los Angeles jobbers, reports the Eastern market entirely clear of joblots and bargains, and notes that Los Angeles supports 86 cycle dealers and repairmen among some 200,000 inhabitants.
- A Texas inventor offers a manufacturer a pedalless bicycle in which the rider drives a ratchet-toothed wheel above the crank hanger by rising and sitting in the saddle, equestrian "posting" fashion, with a helical spring in the seat post mast lifting the saddle.
- How to distinguish a chain stretched out of pitch from one merely slackly adjusted, by holding it taut between thumb and forefinger and working it back and forth.
- The Wanderer Cycle Works of Schoenau, one of the largest German makers, will again declare a 17 per cent dividend.
- A correspondent describes an amateur-built countershaft two-speed gear for belt-driven motorcycles, using an ordinary safety bicycle sprocket, a larger front sprocket and a duplicate engine belt pulley, at the cost of dismounting to change gear.
- A sardonic letter signed "British Workmanship" catalogues six months' failures on a 5-6 horsepower machine — broken valve lifters, a belt that parted in three places near Hammersmith Bridge, and a band brake he calls absolutely useless.
- A spark plug and ignition current tester brought out by Mr. Bourne-Dale of Manchester, England: an insulated post carrying three conducting rings and a pair of knife switches, usable in series or parallel without removing the plug from the cylinder.
- A chemist finds that a saturated solution of hyposulphate of soda dissolves soot from valve passages and piston head without dismounting the cylinders or harming the cylinder walls.
- Stranded with a broken contact blade and a blacksmith who had no suitable steel, a motorist fashioned a jury blade from a stiffener out of the blacksmith's wife's corsets, transferring the platinum point from the broken original.
- Editorial urging the two American manufacturers' associations to appoint an export committee, contrasting the United Kingdom's $550,000 August cycle exports with the United States' figure of less than $92,000.
- Editorial holding up the French motorcyclists' "promenade" — ladies free with escorts, half price alone — as a model for bringing former wheelwomen back to cycling, since companionship is what they lack.
- Editorial complaint that American motor bicycle frames and their generously proportioned saddles are built so high that short-legged riders must go abroad for a mount.
- August cycle export returns reached $91,813 against $70,092 a year earlier, with the United Kingdom jumping from $6,628 to $18,568 and Japan from $8,665 to $24,458; a full table of destinations and eight-month totals accompanies the report.
- Scraps of celluloid dissolved in acetone make a quick-drying waterproof insulating varnish for binding posts and battery boxes, tintable by using coloured celluloid.
- German steel ball makers are recovering from the depression that followed their overproduction, helped by the automobile, with leading works now paying dividends above 6 per cent.
- R. G. Benson has resigned as manager of the Hartford Rubber Works Co.'s New York branch to join the G. & J. Tire Co. at Indianapolis; E. S. Roe, lately of the New York uptown store, fills the vacancy.
- Advice to repairmen to point out dents and nicks in tubing before undertaking an enameling or nickel plating job, since enamel will not conceal them and honesty at the outset often earns the customer's gratitude.
- A motorcyclist with a broken inlet valve spring rigged a stiff iron wire loop in the cotter-pin hole and another on the tube above, joined by a stout rubber band, and rode several miles home without pedalling.
- The Garden City Wheelmen of San José were allowed into only the two-mile handicap at the Alameda track meet of 30 September, other clubs reportedly fearing their Salt Lake City form; C. Chaboya won that race, the New Century Wheelmen took the thirty-mile relay, and Lawrenson on a Duck won the five-mile motorcycle race in 7:37.
- G. W. Breed and C. R. Herrick of San Diego, out to set a California-to-Buffalo record on a five horsepower motorcycle with tandem attachment, lost control at Escondido and ran into a wall.
- Before 12,000 spectators at Cologne, Robert J. Walthour beat Guenther over an hour behind pacing machines with 38.34 miles, then fell after the get-away in the 10-kilometre event won by Guignard in 12:05.
- An authority blames the decline of correct pedalling on novices starting with too high a gear, and on racing men who over-gear and strap their feet to the pedals instead of learning ankle action.
- France's first six-day race, on the Madison Square Garden plan, drew nearly 15,000 to the Vélodrome Bazacle at Toulouse on 24 September; after 24 hours Georget Brothers and Wattelier-Landrieux led with 445 miles 99 yards, against the 510-mile record of McFarland and Elkes.
- Paris motorcyclists have organised a two-day "promenade" to Compiègne and back on 6 and 7 October, limited to tri-cars and quadricycles, free for women passengers, with each driver required to carry a camera and submit six photographs and an account to a jury.
- A caution to riders keeping close to the curb about pedestrians who cut across mid-block without looking, walking as though in a brown study directly into the path of anything approaching from behind.
- English cyclists are said to be buying burial space in pretty rural graveyards such as Perivale and Stoke Poges that they discovered awheel, one new headstone covering a cyclist who chose the site on the spot.
- Charles Gustafson, Jr., on a 2 1/2 horsepower R-S won the five-mile motorcycle race at the automobile meeting on the half-mile Shillington track near Reading, Pa., in 8:04, with William Bewly second, also on an R-S.
- At Vailsburg, Frank Kramer made a successful debut behind pace by beating James F. Moran in five-mile heats, George Cameron of the New York A. C. won the one mile national amateur championship, and Watson J. Kluczek took the unlimited pursuit — with Gaelic football as a sideshow before 4,000.
- Louis Mettling beat Lorgeu by six laps and hopelessly outrode Simar in a 50-kilometre motorpaced race at the Buffalo Velodrome in 43:20; Delage made his professional debut and Hervy cut the French unpaced 10-kilometre record to 15:15.
- The Providence Motorcycle Club has been sanctioned for a second race meet on the Hills Grove track on 21 October and has applied to the F. A. M. Competition Committee for the undecided ten-mile national championship; B. A. Swenson is chairman.
- J. B. Dunlop of Dublin tells how his son's slow solid-tired tricycle led him in 1887 to build an air tube of sheet rubber on a wooden disc, and how bouncing that disc against the coach-house door against a solid-tired wheel proved its resiliency; he denies the story that he made the tire because his son was delicate.
- Charles Kelson of Brockton, off five minutes, beat Jud Small by a half-wheel in the Brockton dealers' fifteen mile road race of 29 September; Charlie Helander took first time prize in 45:06 2/5, two-fifths of a second ahead of W. H. Bussey, from a field of thirty-one.
- The text of a new Georgia law for Catoosa county: a 10 mile an hour limit, a full stop 150 feet from any horse or mule with all machinery shut off, a horn 150 feet from a hitched animal, and registration numbers issued by the superior court clerk.
- Intermittent misfiring often traces to a loose plug-and-socket or a weak spring blade at the switch rather than a break in the ignition circuit; test the contact with a visiting card and run the machine on the stand.
- George M. Hendee, now "big chief" of the Indian motorcycle and once champion of America, surprised a party of motorcyclists by saying he never used toe clips, even in his championship days on the high bicycle.
- Skidding comes from side thrust at the tire tread when the road is sliding, the machine is canted outside its wheel base, or a turn is taken so sharply the rear inertia overcomes traction; keeping to the centre of the road in a straight line is the beginning of the cure.
- The Federation of American Motorcyclists is registering and numbering first-class repair shops and issuing a gold-bordered certificate; applicants must have two years' practical experience, lathe equipment and stocks of spare parts, batteries and spark plugs, and a book of shops with storage charges is due in the spring.
- Drill and tap a 3/16 or quarter-inch hole midway in the bottom bracket so the hanger can be filled with kerosene and worked through by turning the cranks, cleaning the crank axle bearings without dismounting them.
- Heavy rain permeates an oiled road and floats oil to the top, where it mixes with loose soil and saponifies into one of the most effective skidding lubricants a cyclist can meet.
- K. H. Evans of Exeter, England proposes a series of horizontal blades half an inch apart inside the headlight, blackened above and polished below, to throw light down onto the road and absorb the upward rays that blind approaching cyclists.
- Soaking a fork or other part in a strong solution of lye of caustic soda peels the old enamel off in strips; a light treatment with fine emery cloth then leaves a flat smooth surface for the new coat.
- How the repairman should keep the copper bit properly tinned — never heated above red heat, quenched in cold water, filed and amalgamated with tin over salammoniac — with killed acid the best flux for tin and steel, salammoniac for brass and copper, and powdered resin for zinc and lead.
- Tires should be inspected for embedded glass and for air blisters forming under the tread, which wear through quickly; the remedies are a leak-preventing solution injected into the tire or a tape bandage over the blisters.
- The two stages a novice passes through: early confidence after a few hundred miles of carburetter adjustments, then the humbling discovery, far from anywhere, that ignition and carburetion troubles take a great variety of forms.
- A Norfolk county judge has ruled that prosecutions under the new Massachusetts automobile law must prove reckless driving and not merely that the speed limit was exceeded, discharging a motorist arrested on speed evidence alone.
- Dr. Bach, a German tourist whose brakes failed on a steep Alpine descent, was thrown over the parapet of a bridge across the River Reuss and hung from a girder chain over the abyss for almost half an hour before peasants hauled him up.