Sturmey Archer Hub Haul - More Stuff to Work on this Winter

 Here's a recent parts haul: three Sturmey Archer AW three speed hub. One is an early AW with small imprint and 40 hole shell (for an English bike); the second is a 1950 40 hole hub (for an English bike); and the third is a 1956 36 hole hub (for an American/Schwinn bike).

The early hub has the old-style plating and hardware, whereas the post-war hubs have the nicer chrome and the more familiar hardware. The early AW and the 1950 have the threaded type drivers and sprockets.

All three hubs should be decent projects for cleaning and repair this winter. 

Resurfacing Vintage Hub Cones

 If you have been restoring old bikes for a long enough time, you've undoubtedly run into at least one or two cases of pitted cones. [The basics of cup and cone hubs can be found HERE.]

Often, the cone and bearing balls will become worn or pitted first, followed eventually by the cup inside the hub shell. This presents an opportunity - if you can clean, repair, and re-pack the hub before the cup inside the hub shell goes bad, you usually can save the hub the scrap heap. 

So you need good bearing balls and good cones. Good bearing balls for the common Schwinn, Raleigh, Sturmey, etc. hubs are available on eBay, Amazon, etc. I buy mine in bags of 500. 

That leaves us with the cone - what to do with a pitted cone. If the pits are very minimal, you may be able to ignore them for now, or you may get by with a simple, gentle hand polishing with some Simichrome polish and a soft cloth.

But what if the cone needs more resurfacing? Sometimes this is easily done because the replacement parts are common, but sometimes you want to try to save the old part.

Over the past couple of days, I've set up my desktop drill press so that I can resurface old cones. The results have been very good - cones with minor and moderate pitting can be smoothed out using the drill press.

Here is the set up:

I have an scrap Sturmey Archer front axle in the chuck of the drill press, and the cone needing work threaded onto the axle. (Note - use an axle that is scrap, don't use a good one in the chuck). 

On the work platform are my supplies - a bottle of light oil, a pencil stone (as one can get for a Dremel tool), coarse sand emery, fine emery, a felt polishing tip, and Simichrome polish.

So let's begin...

With the axle in the chuck, and the cone threaded tightly onto the axle, we can now turn on the drill press and it will turn the axle and cone. This particular cone has moderate pitting, as show below. Let's give this a try because, frankly, the alternative is to throw it away anyway, so why not try to save it?

With the drill press turning our set up, we can put some oil on the stone and gently begin smoothing the bearing surface. I work in gentle, up and down strokes to cover the surface evenly and to preserve the general shape of the cone while removing material. You want to remove material gradually and evenly. Don't press too hard, and refresh the oil every so often. Stop to check your work frequently.

Once the worst of the pitting is gone (it's a judgment call), you can move to the coarse emery. Again, oil the emery a bit and gently smooth, using up and down strokes to evenly cover the surface. Don't push too hard. Let the emery and oil do the work of smoothing.

After awhile, you should have a relatively smooth surface. You've removed enough material to get rid of all but the smallest pits (they're tiny specs now). You may need several cycles of stone and coarse emery to get where you want to be for final smoothing. When you reach that point, it's time for the fine emery with a little oil on it. Your end of the work is the same: gentle pressure, and up and down strokes to evenly work the surface.

Below is the surface after the coarse emery and before the fine. You can see it's already much smoother, but there is still a little more to go...

 

And below is the surface after the fine emery. Getting there...

Having gone through the stone, coarse emery, and fine emery, we're now ready for a final polishing. This will give us the smooth, mirror-like finish we want for running the hub with the bearing balls. I take a little felt polishing tip (again, the kind you might buy for a Dremel tool), and load up the tip with some Simichrome polish. This is a high-quality metal polish that I like for cleaning up plated or smooth metal surfaces.

No to sound like a broken record, but your process is the same: gentle pressure and up-and-down strokes with the polishing tip to work the surface evenly. Below is the result.

Not bad at all... it's looking much better.

At this point you have a couple of choices. You can leave the surface "in the white", which is fine if you are going to immediately build this cone into a hub and start riding. The grease and use of the hub will prevent corrosion.

But if the cone is going into the parts drawer for later use, why not add a little rust prevention? At this point, I take a rag with some acetone on it, and de-grease the surface of the cone. With the surface clean, I apply a little cold bluing solution (Birchwood Casey brand, in this case). The bluing will bring the surface to match the rest of the cone, and we end up with a part that looks an awful lot like a new old stock cone. It might not be perfect... but it's a lot better and we've saved this cone from the scrap heap.

And the cone can then be rebuilt into a hub using the normal re-packing method.

One question you may have is whether we can do this with a Sturmey Archer AW cone. We often come across AW hubs that have pitted cones, but are otherwise in good shape. The answer is, "yes", you can absolutely resurface a Sturmey Archer AW cone with mild or moderate pitting. You'll need a donor Sturmey Axle half to put in the chuck, and then your work is basically the same as I have outlined above.

The result is pretty good:

So the bottom line is, yes, you can absolutely save your old front and rear hub cones if you have a home drill press, a few basic materials, and the patience to check your work as you go. Let's save as many of these old parts as we can.

1942 Schwinn New World / B.F. Goodrich New World and Fall Colors

 

 

Swapped this 1942 Schwinn / B.F. Goodrich New World over to a set of pre-war touring bars. I got these from a seller online, and they go nicely with this bike. They're just a size or so bigger than the post-war New World type bars. They're pretty comfortable. The Gyes saddle still needs breaking in. It's definitely harder leather than a Brooks, but perhaps with some time and effort, it will improve. 

Fall Colors

 Fall is certainly here now - cooler weather, shorter days, and lots of colorful leaves. It seems to me the foliage is actually a little behind where it usually is this time of year. We haven't yet had a hard frost that would really bring out the colors and falling leaves all at one time. We've had a few warm, sunny days here lately, which means a final chance to do some riding before the cold weather and really short days come. I'm riding this 1958 Raleigh Sports four speed - a long time favorite of mine - this week. 

What Was the "Golden Age" of English Three Speeds, Anyway?

One of the subjects sometimes discussed by enthusiasts of vintage bicycles, and particularly three speed bikes, is exactly when the "golden age" of the English three speed took place in the United States. Collectors of such bicycles in the U.S. today seem to focus on the period from 1946 through 1959 as the "golden age". This short article argues that the "golden age" of the English three speed in the United States in broader memory took place between 1960 and the road bike boom of the early '70s, contrary to the viewpoint of most collectors today.

First, let's address the geography. In Britain, we can trace the popular three speed bike back to the early days of internal gears around 1900. In contrast, in the United States, relatively few three speeds were imported prior to the 1930s. A British enthusiast might think of the "golden age" as being antique three speed bikes from before WWII, whereas even a 1950s bike would be an antique in the United States.

Most collectors of three speed bikes in the United States regard the apex of quality as taking place some time between 1935 and 1960. Opinions differ, but generally the period 1946 through 1959 is cited most frequently as the "golden age", based on quality and the variety of English three speed bikes offered in the U.S. I tend to agree with that assessment, if we're looking at just quality-of-product.

I'd like to offer another perspective, one that could be called the "popular viewpoint". In other words, how the general public remembers the English three speed in the U.S. rather than the relatively niche group of collectors who have these bikes today. This broader view holds that the "golden age" of the English three speed in the United States took place between 1960 and the 10-speed boom of the early '70s.

During the 1950s, "balloon tire" single speed long-popular in the U.S. went into a steep decline. That style of bike was gradually replaced by "middleweight" bicycles, some of which had hand brakes and three speed hubs, introducing many riders to elements of English three speed bikes. Eventually, these bicycles were supplanted by the small wheel "muscle bikes" and the English three speed bikes in the early and mid 1960s. For many people in high school, college/university, and graduate school settings in the 1960s and early 1970s, the English three speed bike was the go-to vehicle. 

The people I've spoken to over the years point to the period between 1960 and the 10-speed "bike boom" of the early 1970s as being the popular "golden age" of the three speed in the U.S. These riders, generally born between 1940 and 1960, relied heavily on English three speeds to get to school, commute to class, pick up groceries, deliver newspapers, etc. It is also interesting that this period do not coincide with what collectors today think of as the "golden age" of English bikes in the U.S. In fact, collectors sometimes deride the bikes made after the early 1960s as increasingly more cheaply made than earlier bikes. 

The quantity of English three speeds imported into the U.S. is much closer to the popular memory than with the collectors and experts today. The vast majority of English three speeds imported into the U.S. came into the country from 1960 through 1975. There was strong demand for these bikes after the decline of the balloon tire bikes, but before the 10-speed road bike boom of the early '70s. 

The anecdotes I have heard (samples below) over the years are consistent with popular memory as well:

 

"In the 1960s, no one wanted fat tire bikes anymore. Those were heavy and not cool. Everyone wanted either a Sting Ray or an English three speed."

"I replaced my Sears bike (a middleweight) with an English bike (a three speed Dunelt)."

"In the 1960s, it was de rigeur to have a three speed."

"I bought a Raleigh three speed with my allowance (this was in the early 1960s), put on a basket and delivered newspapers with that bike."

 "I remember three of the kids on my block had three speeds in the 1960s."

[Several people I have spoken to over the years recall getting British three speed bikes as presents from family members in the 1960s. Their stories are all similar]

 

Given that three speed bike use in the U.S. appears to have been strongest from 1960 through the road bike boom of the early 70s, there is a certain collector snobbishness at work. In the popular mind, and especially among the large "baby boom" generation, the English three speed in the U.S. will be remembered as an icon of the years between 1960 and the early 70s, alongside the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, James Bond, and the Rolling Stones. Popular memory overall and what a narrow set of collectors have in mind often aren't the same thing.