Trying to Keep Pace with Derailleurs: 4 and 5 Speed Raleighs

A few shots of a couple "extra" speed Raleighs -  black 1958 Sports FW 4-speed and green late-60s Sprite S5 5-speed.

It turns out that the FW and S5 are basically the same hub. Speed 1-4 are the same in each. The S5 gets its extra "top" gear because it has a non-drive side bell crank that allows movement from 4th gear (high) to 5th gear (top) by moving to the second sun gear.

 By the late 1940s, it was apparent that derailleur-equipped bicycles were making serious progress in their ability to run multiple gears reliably. This was especially true of developments in bike design in France.

During the 1940s, Sturmey Archer debuted the FW wide-ranged four-speed hub. Sturmey also offered the FM medium-ratio four-speed and the FG four-speed with a built-in dynamo.

By the 1960s, Sturmey Archer was able to squeeze one more gear from the FW design via a non-drive side bell crank, creating a 5-speed hub. By this time, however, Sturmey Archer quality was beginning to decline.


Even Raleigh, a stalwart of internal gear hub use, had debuted derailleur bikes in the 1950s. By the late 1960s, even utility bikes, like the Sprite, were being offered in both derailleur and internal gear hub versions.


The S5 was the last "classic" Sturmey Archer hub of the post-war era.











The S5 would ultimately undergo several variations into the modern era, including a rather pitiful version with a long pull shifter that never seemed to run very well.






 At left, a Rohloff hub.














Today, companies like Sunrace-Sturmey, Shimano, and Rohloff continue to develop internal gear hubs with more gearings, but they remain in the minority. The internal gear hub, as high-performance equipment is more or less done. But the internal gear hubs soldier on in utility bikes, commuters, and rental bikes.

Short Guide: Lugged and Brazed Versus Fillet Brazed

Sometimes you hear people talk about old, steel framed bicycles as being "lugged and brazed" or "fillet brazed". What is that?

Start by remembering that the bicycle frame begins as a bunch of metal tubes. Let's say like most old bikes, we have steel tubes for a frame. This 1970-ish Raleigh Sprite has plain steel tubes. They're not any kind of exotic alloy or exotic shape - just steel tubes.


 You need some way of joining the steel tubes, so you have a couple choices - you could melt the steel itself where tubes come together (welding). Why not just do this? Well, many cheap steel department store bikes today do that. Older balloon tire bicycles did that too - they were not concerned about weight. Many basic Schwinn bikes did a special form of welding up through the early 1980s.

The problem with welding is that, for many years, it required tubes with relatively thick, heavy walls. With a nice bicycle, you want to keep the strength high while lowering the weight. Welding makes a strong frame, but you're giving up some lightness.

Another option is "brazing" the steel frame. Brazing is to take another metal, generally an alloy with a lower melting point than steel, and to join the steel tubes by melting this other metal and using it as a sort of "glue". This allows you to use thinner walled steel tubes while still building a sufficiently strong frame.

One way we could accomplishing brazing is by taking a hollow "elbow" of sorts that is bigger than the frame tubes, stick the tubes into the hollow elbow, and braze the whole thing together. When someone talks about an old, "lugged" frame, that's what he or she means.

 At left you can see a Raleigh frame. The lugs are where the tubes join each other. The lug is an elbow-like sleeve used to join two different tubes. We can get away with the lighter tubing than welding.

 At right, this Raleigh Sports has lugs at each end of the head tube. The sockets allow joining the head tube and the other tubes of the main frame section without having to resort to heavier tube walls and welding.

So do you really need sockets to braze a bicycle together, or is that the only alternative to welding? Well, you could fillet braze the bicycle together. You don't need lugs for that, and you can still use better tubing than heavy, welded steel.

In order to fillet braze you'll again be taking softer alloy with a lower melting point to use as your "glue" for the frame tubes. But this time, you'll be cutting miters or "fish mouths" into the ends of some of your tubes. The result is that the frame actually fits together without any brazing material - and if the frame is good, the fit will be very close. It's sort of like a jig saw puzzle where on tube fits directly onto the next through cut-outs.

 The Schwinn New World at left is fillet brazed. Fish mouths are cut into the top and down tubes. They fit closely to the head tube, the brazing material is melted and worked into the close joint.

 At right is the seat cluster on the same frame. This time, the seat tube is joining a fish-mouthed top tube and brazing worked into the joint.

Here's the bottom bracket. That "slag" or "blob" around the joint is the brazing material. The other joints are smoother because these blobs of brazing are filed down to be smoother.




So which is better? I can't say as either one is necessarily better. They just accomplish the same thing in different ways.

In fact, Schwinn's top-of-the line Paramount bikes were lugged rather than fillet brazed. But there are plenty of examples of well-made fillet brazed Schwinns and other bikes that survive to this day.

My suggestion is to try both, and perhaps own an example or two of both types of construction. They can each be very attractive and a lot of fun to ride.

Good and Bad

We've had quite a lot of rain here lately, and the next two days are supposed to be non-stop rain events. So I got a little time this weekend to ride this Raleigh Sprite 5-speed.

The ride is somewhere between a utility 3-speed and a 10-speed road bike, which is expected. It has the weight and geometry of a 3-speed Raleigh, but with a closer ratio transmission and 2 more gears.

It's a fun bike to ride and in excellent shape.


















On the downside, people are now dumping more and more garbage in the nature area near where I ride.







There are signs and a hefty fine for littering, but people continue to dump whole bags of garbage right into the swamp. This is unacceptable, and it is sheer laziness that drives people do this sort of thing. I do hope the police catch and fine these individuals.