Last week we were paid a visit by Bill Wischer, who, through the cool bikes and photos he showed us, opened us up to a whole new world of Milwaukee-based racing and bike building. The race scene centered around builder Grover Horn.

Grover was a promoter who ran the South Milwaukee Motor Speedway during the late 20′s and into the Great Depression. By 1934, he was promoting midget car racing at what became the Milwaukee Mile. In 1936, he caught the bicycling fever, starting his shop on the northwest side of Milwaukee, around the corner from Ware’s old shop (Ware’s subsequently moved to West Allis).

Unlike many framebuilders, Grover never lost his promotional touch. In the late 30′s, he organized the dominant race team in the city with 75 members.

Among the members were Bob Wischer and his wife to be, Dolly Becker, shown her on a trip to the races in Buffalo, NY. Both of them won state championships (Dolly was the Wisconsin State Champ 1937-39) and competed nationally. Grover’s framebuilding and bike racing program continued until World War II, which halted all bike racing. Though he may have tried to crank up his team and building after the war, bike racing fell into decline. He passed away in 1956.

Dolly Wischer is still alive and taking the time to maintain some of this history. Here’s a link to a numbers of photos of her bike. The set includes photos of the track in Kenosha as well as at Chicago’s Humboldt Park.

Thanks again to Bill Wischer for this terrific piece of cycling history!

This bike went down in flames. Our client, a business person from Taiwan, saw some of our Flame Lug designs through the years and needed one to match his special fit requirements. The entire frame is built in stainless steel. Let’s walk through the build process:

As with all Waterfords, we collaborate with our dealers through four stages of design: function, fit, feel and finish. Once a work order is complete, the details are confirmed through the local shop. In this instance we worked with Modus Velo in Tai Chung. For this frame, we began work by crafting the lugs:

After crafting the lugs, we machined the frame materials. We then fixtured the frame for brazing. EJ is shown here brazing the head lugs.

Brazing stainless steel lugs to stainless steel tubes is one of the most challenging demonstrations in the art of frame building. The especially large size and ornate profile of the Flame lugs present demands to the builder as well. After brazing, the frame is cleaned in preparation for inspection:

Then it’s off to the polisher for a mirror finish. Here are some samples of the finished bike:

American Cyclery, a terrific shop in San Francisco, approached us about a customer of theirs, Tom Savarino, who has been suffering from number of leg and hip injuries, including losing part of his leg. In spite of this, Tom has remained an avid cyclist, tackling the hills of San Francisco between surgeries. One of the ways he coped with his situation was to move his cleat to the heel of his prosthesis:

This created obvious toe overlap problems. Instead starting to build a bike, we connected him up with Mark Laytham, Waterford dealer (Ballwin Cyclery in Ballwin, MO) and one of the most knowledgeable people around on prostheses. Mark walked Tom through modifications to his artificial limb. Now we could make a design really work. Tom sent us this photo from when he picked up his bike from American (shown with owner Brad Woehl):

“Sorry it took me so long to write. Thank you for all your help. I really love my new bike. . . . Also, I’ve accidentally turned into a roving ambassador for Waterford. More people
that you’d think (than I’d think) come up to me and ask me about my leg and my bike.
I gave up trying to lead a low key life while riding, so it’s no problem. i hope some
other amputee gets convinced that it’s possible.

best regards
ts”

May you have many happy miles on your new Waterford!

The project to update the web site started last summer but was put off because of philosophical issues with the model line. We decided instead to focus on our new order form, which has turned out to be quite successful for both dealers and riders.

So, for now, we decided to ignore the model line organization problem and forge on based on the philosophy behind the order form.