Marcella: My number one painter

I learned a lot in the fifteen months I worked for Masi, from October 1980 until December 1981. I was hired to assemble and braze frames, and I found by building these in batches of 5 or 10 all the same size, I could build 10 frames a week, 40 a month, quite comfortably.

Other people did the file and finish work, and Masi employed a full time painter. I knew if I opened my own shop I would need to operate in a similar manner. There is a limit to the amount one man can produce, no matter how many hours he may work.

I knew finding a skilled Bicycle painter was not going to be easy. I was actually surrounded by painters, they had all learned their skills working for Masi, People like Brian Baylis, Jim Cunningham, and Jim Alan, but they all had their own established businesses, and would rather have had me subcontract with them to paint my frames.

However, I had always done my own paint, and felt I needed to have my own paint facility, and have complete control over the process. Plus a large chunk of the profit in framebuilding is lost when using a sub-contract painter. I decided I would train my own painter, to do the job the way I preferred, and I could take up the slack during the training process.

I didn’t have to look very far as it happened, the ideal candidate was right under my nose. Marcella Welch was a young girl who delivered the Imron paint to me. She worked for a local Paint Supply Company, drove a little red pickup truck and I would see her almost on a daily basis. If she wasn’t bringing my paint, she would be dropping off supplies for the other above mentioned painters, all working out of the same shop.

Marcella always showed an interest in what we were doing, and one day in quite casual conversation, mentioned that she would “Love to learn a skill like this.” I told her I would be opening my own shop in San Marcos in a few weeks, and there would be a job if she was interested. That is how Marcella Welch became my first full time painter.

The picture at the top of the page was a posed simulation of painting a frame. In reality there was a special device that slid inside the seat tube like a seat post, but with an expanding rubber sleeve to hold it in place. There was a ring on the top were the frame hung securely from the ceiling of the paint booth.

A piece of tube placed though the bottom bracket shell acted as a handle so the frame could be maneuvered with the left hand, while holding the paint gun in the right hand. The painter could rotate the frame, and at the same time twist it in any direction to paint all around every tube.

Painting bicycle frames requires a special set of skills. You can’t paint one side of the frame, the turn it around and paint the other side. The paint where you started would be dry and would not flow out smoothly. Each tube has to be painted separately. This can cause problems as it is easy to get a buildup of paint where the tubes meet at the lugs.

A beginning painter would start by spaying the primer coat. This dries to a matt finish, and has to be sanded anyway before the color coats are applied. Marcella started in 1983 when the new shop opened. The John Howard’s were the frames she would learn on.

The Howard frame had chrome plating to be masked off before the frame is sandblasted and immediately prime coated. The color coat was a single color, then dry fix (Rub on.) decals applied. Followed by eight clear coats over the decals, and after the paint was cured in the paint oven, the clear coats over decals was sanded smooth.

All the steps outlined in the previous paragraph are all procedures that a beginning painter would soon carry out. The final finish clear coat is the most difficult. A wet coat applied quickly so the clear coat flows out smooth with no dry spots. But at the same time not so wet that the paint runs.

With some 300 Howard frames produced in less than a year, Marcella, learned quickly, and within three months was handling all the John Howard painting, including the all-important final clear coat.

Marcella was my number one painter, in that she was the first, in the years 1983 to 1986 when production was at its highest. 300 John Howards, plus all the 1st. Generation Fuso frames, which is probably another 1,000 frames. Add to that the first year’s production of the Recherché.   

I recently spoke to Marcella on the phone and we reminisced some. She said it was a lot of fun. She remembered going to the trade shows and seeing people like Bernard Hinault and Eddy Merckx in person.

However, I got the impression that she didn’t grasp the importance, or the lasting value of the work she did. The frames she painted are still out there. Most with the original paint, many still being ridden and enjoyed by their owners to this day.

In 1986 I moved my business the Temecula, sixty mile north of San Marcos. Marcella didn’t care for the daily commute, and left before the end of 1986. She went to work for Cyclart, and painted a number of Greg LeMond frames.

Jay Denny, who is the younger brother of Russ Denny, my former apprentice, took over as painter. He also had no previous experience, but I trained him. Like Marcella, Jay learned quickly and did some fine work. He left around 1990 to pursue other career goals.

My final painter was Morgan Carlton, who unlike his predecessors, had worked for Cyclart and was already a skilled painter. When I left the business in 1993, Russ Denny took over the shop and Morgan stayed on for a while as a freelance painter.

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Supply and Demand

 

This week a bike I built, (Pictured above.) a Fuso FRX model, is up for sale on eBay. The asking price is $2,500. That is more than twice what it would sell for if it were offered on open auction. More money than it cost new in 1990, when it was built. See this article here.

It is a nice one I will admit, in almost mint condition, it has obviously had little use, but I built 2,400 Fuso frames between 1984 and 1993. They are not that rare. Maybe one of my custom ‘dave moulton’ bikes, if it were in this condition, might go for over $2,000, but I only built 216 of those. Big difference.

How about “Demand,” the other side of the equation? I have a Registry that has (At the time of writing.) 358 Fuso bikes listed. Some owners have more than one Fuso in their collection, so this is less than 358 owners. Not a large number considering there were over 2,400 built.

These are owners who care enough about the Fuso brand to email me with details so I can add their bike to the list. So let me ask this. Given the relatively small number of true Fuso enthusiasts, how many would be owners are waiting in the wings, on the lookout for a frame or bike to buy? Not many, and not at these outrageous prices.

The problem Is, the bikes on eBay offered at these high prices, rarely sell. They just sit there for weeks on end, then they disappear for a while, only to be relisted again at a later date, at the same high price. So when someone happens to inherit a Fuso, or they find one in a thrift store, or garage sale. (It does happen.) They see these greatly inflated prices on eBay, and think they have struck gold.

The “Supply and Demand” factor came into play when the frames were built. There were more of the mid sizes built, 56, 57, and 58 centimeters. These were in greater demand, because there are more cyclists that fall within these sizes. The next most popular were the sizes above and below these sizes, namely 59, 60, 61, and 53, 54, 55 centimeter.

There were fewer very large and very small sizes built because there were less people needing these sizes. The same supply and demand factor applies today. There will be more demand for the mid-size frames, however, there will be more of these coming up for sale, because there were more of the built.   

Conversely, the very large or very small frames are in less demand, but there were fewer built. This means if an extreme large or small frame comes up for sale, you may get it at a bargain price, because you are the only one needing that size. On the other hand if there are two or more bidders, the price will go higher.

The buyer then has to make a decision. Pay more, or wait for another to come along in this size, knowing it might be a while because of its comparative rarity. Whether you pay more or not, depends a lot on the frame’s condition. If, for example the paint is really nice, pay a little extra. If the paint is rough, let it go.

Educate yourself by following sales on eBay and Craig’s List. Join the “Dave Moulton Bikes” group on Facebook. Members there are always posting and discussing bikes for sale. I have no financial interest on any frames sold online, so I have no interest in influencing prices. I just hate to see anyone get ripped off, whether they are buyer or seller.

I try to maintain interest in the brands I built, John Howard, Fuso, Recherché, etc., with this blog, and my Registry. My loyalty is with the people who own and ride bikes I built, not those who wish to profit unfairly with over-inflated prices.

I will not be building any more frames, so the supply will never increase, but there are still plenty out there in people’s basements and garages, waiting to be discovered. When the list of Fuso owners on my Registry reaches a thousand, I will consider there is a demand.

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Two Recent Finds

Two very different and interesting pieces of my past work recently surfaced and were brought to my attention.

The first is a tandem built in England in 1975 recently showed up in Scotland when it was offered on eBay.

It was bought by Ewen Docherty, who sent me pictures, it has two sets of twin lateral tubes front and rear.

Probably one of the simplest and most sturdy of the various tandem frame configurations I built over the years.

Ewen is in the process of stripping down and re-building the bike. He sent these pictures after he had cleaned up the original paint on the frame. Not bad for 39 years old.

I nicknamed tandems “Tantrums.” I would invariably have one while building a tandem frame. The problem was a tandem frame was more than twice the amount of work of two single frames, however, it sold for less than the price of two singles, so I was screwed before I even started.

Just physically handling the frame while working on it was a pain. Every time you move it in the vise, you have to hold the frame in one hand as you tighten the vise with the other. This is no problem with a single frame, but with the size and the weight of a tandem frame it is a whole different story.

Often I could not turn away work, and people would pester me to build one for them, so I agreed. When I first came to the US I built a few tandems at Paris Sport.

But, when I started my own business again in Southern California, I vowed I would never build another tandem frame. I always said there was not enough money that anyone could offer the get me to build one more. No one ever tested me by offering a lot of money, so no more were ever built.

Having said all that, finishing a tandem frame did give more than twice the satisfaction of two singles, and that still goes for today when I see one.

The second bike to show up just this week is a Recherché, owned by Stephen Bryne from Ventura, California. When Stephen first emailed me he threw me a curve. When he described the decals and gave me the frame number 001A, it didn’t jibe with the Recherché frames I built and I feared he had a bootleg version.

However, when he sent photos I could see it was the genuine article, the scalloped treatment of the tube ends at the front and rear drop-outs was one clue. (See right.)

This was also a rare find and was a part of the history of the Recherché brand. Here is the story that I have told before but bears repeating.

In 1985 two young brothers Kent and Kyle Radford owned a bike store in Rancho Benardo, CA, just north of San Diego.

They wanted their own brand of bike they could sell in their store, and also market around Southern Calafornia. They had a name, Recherché, and a decal design, I agreed to build the frames.

Kent and Kyle were both avid bike riders, so it was natural that the first Recherché frames I built would be for them. Kent got a 53cm. frame number 001, and the last I heard he still owns it today.

The frame I built for the younger brother Kyle was a 56cm. and I stamped it 001A. That way both got a number one frame.

This is that very same frame. It has been repainted, hence the different decals.

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Bootleg Recherché

One of the production frames I built from 1985 and on was the Recherché; it was a private label frame built for Kent and Kyle Radford, who owned a bike store in Rancho Bernardo, in San Diego County.

I never officially stopped making the Recherché; the orders just gradually dried up and stopped as the demand for road bikes dwindled in the late 1980s due to the popularity of Mountain Bikes.

I built a little over 200 Recherché frames so when Wayne from San Diego emailed me last July to say he had frame number 814 I was doubtful it was one I built. Some of the other details Wayne gave did not ring true; I asked for pictures to confirm.

The pictures confirmed it was not built by me. It is a nice hand crafted frame, obviously built by someone who knows how to build frames, but why it has the Recherché name on it is a mystery. Earlier this year I saw another on eBay with similar decals to this, but also not built by me.

I contacted Kent Radford and he didn’t know of any Recherché frames other than those I built. He did speculate that an ex-employee of his may have bootlegged a few. The question that begs asking is why? If you are going to bootleg a frame, why a Recherché?  

It is not like someone had a bunch of left over decals and decided to slap them on a frame. These decals had to be made special; the original were Black, Red and Gold on a White panel, these were single color Yellow. The bike I saw on eBay had single color Black decals.

If you are going to the trouble of making decals why not come up with your own brand name, or even the name of the person who built it.

The owner of this bike says the guy he bought it from took it as payment for some landscape work and had no history of it. The current owner would like to know who built it, and so would I. I am just curious, I am not about to get angry or sue anyone.

The frame does not say it was built by me. I have not been harmed by this; but it matters to an owner like Wayne who thought he had something built by me, then found out it wasn’t.

The rear drop outs (Above.) have been nicely filed, but the Recherche (Below left.) had this distinctive treatment to the front and rear drop outs.

The tube ends were scalloped with a round file and the brass allowed to sink inside as the brazing cooled.

I was imitating a style that is common to many French frame builders.

The genuine Recherche logo is black, red, and gold (Left.) the bootleg version is a single line copy. (Right.)

The frames I built had my name on the left chainstay, and had a tubular chainstay bridge, (Below.) the other has a cast bridge. (Below left.)

The bootleg frame is built in Columbus SLX a tubing that wasn’t available at the time I built the Recherche.

You can read more on the Recherche here.

Update March 31, 2022

Since writing this article I have learned that the Recherche frames mentioned here were not strictly speaking “Bootleg” in that they were commissioned by Kent and Kyle Radford, the owners of the Recherche brand.

I was originally told back in 2011 that the frames were built ‘unofficially” by a former employee, hence I labeled them “Bootleg.” Recently in a conversation with Kyle Radford, he told me that after I stopped building the Recherche, he had a small number of frames (About 12 or so.) built in “The Old Masi Shop.” This is what I was told.

When these frames kept popping up for sale, and the sellers listed the as built by me, I had to address the matter. One seller recently contacted Jim Allen, who was Masi’s former painter, who admitted he painted the frames but did not know who built them. I then contacted Ted Kirkbride, the former owner of the Masi shop, and he had no knowledge of the frames, or who built them.

It appears whoever built these frames, they wish to remain anonymous, for whatever reason. Looking at the frames they appear to be built by an experienced builder. One seller speculated that maybe Dave Tesch was the builder. I dismiss that idea because having known Dave Tesch personally, he was never one to do anything anonymously. Plus had Dave T had a hand in it, they would have been built with the steep angle geometry that he was known for.

So, the mystery continues, It doesn’t really concern me, except when someone tries to sell one of these frames using my name as a selling point. There are over 300 Recherche frames that I did build, they all have the distinct “Scalloped” rear stays and fork blades shown in this article.

They also have the white panel decals and say “FROM THE FRAMESHOP OF dave moulton,” on the left chainstay.

                        

Fuso Components

I am often asked, “What was the standard component package on the Fuso?” or John Howard, or Recherché.

The answer: There was no standard component package. The reason, I only sold frames, not complete bikes. The frames were ordered by bicycle dealers, usually for a specific customer, who then chose the components and the bike shop ordered these in and built the bike.

Often what happened was the customer could not afford an all Campagnolo or Shimano Dura-Ace equipped bike. So the dealer built the bike with lower priced components like Sugino, Sun Tour, or Shimano 600.

The thinking was, (And I agreed.) the frame is what determines how the bike fits, handles, and feels to the rider. Wheels are the next important factor, but after that a Sugino crankset, or cheaper pedals will, for the most part, feel no different than Campagnolo. The main difference is the quality of finish and the durability of the product, not so much in the ride quality.

The theory was, get a newcomer on a quality frame, get them hooked on cycling and they would come back and upgrade to a better quality component later. This was a smart business move for the Bike Dealer, and it sold frames for me.

For about the same price as say a mid range Japanese or European import, a customer could get on one of my frames with lower priced components. And of course when the customer compared the mid range import and my bike on a test ride they could feel the difference.

That was the theory. In reality what happened in many cases, the bike purchase was an impulse thing, and after a short period, the bike ended up sitting in the garage where many still languish to this day.

From time to time such a bike comes up on eBay, often with a mish-mosh of cheap components. If you are buying such a bike, realize that you are basically buying it for the frame. If you strip the components to replace them with, say Campagnolo; these left over parts will have little or no resale value.

On the other hand, many may not want such a bike. If you can buy it at a bargain price, you can ride as originally intended and upgrade the components as they become available.

All frames I built were measured center to top which is approximately 2 cm. more that the center to center measurement. For example frame stamped 58 under the bottom bracket shell, would measure 56 cm. center to center. Also, if it is a Fuso and you ask the seller for the frame number, you canlink to my website here and get the approximate date it was built.