Lugs...Beauty and the Beast

Our tube joining method of choice here at Winterborne Custom Bicycles is the timeless art, and skill of lugged construction. More bikes have been made using this method of construction than all others combined; it is a time honoured and successful way of producing a bicycle. Oh yeah and did we mention, it makes for a pretty bike that can take a sprint like nobody's business.

The beauty comes from the hand craftsmanship, and attention to detail that can only come from making one bike at a time. The cast lugs that are available these days have come a long way from the stamped types that were available in the past.  They are thicker, stronger, more reliable, and thanks to lug designers like Kirk Pacenti, Richard Sachs, and Henry James, they are very pretty. These designers have given a new life to the lug. The modern lugs that are available to framebuilders provide Winterborne Custom Bicycles the freedom to confidently produce all sorts of bicycle types. High End Road Racing, Club Racing, Touring, Mountain Bikes, Track Bikes, and Commuters, can all be built with beautiful joints that would make any weld bead jealous!

The Beast. A lugged joint produces a very strong and reliable joint. The tubes beneath the lug are prepped in the same way a TIG welded joint would be made, they are mitered to match the diameter and angle to that of joining tube, no spaces and no gaps. The lugs determine the tube diameters, and the angles to a certain flexible degree. 56% silver is flowed through the joint at 1300 degrees so that no space is left unfilled. What a customer ends up with is a proven connected joint, which is reinforced with a lug. The lug shorelines (or edges) are cleaned up so that none of the joining material (silver) is left over spilling, which ends up providing the rare aesthetic that lug aficionado's look for.

Do you want something different that your friends will drool over?