1995 Claud Butler Titanius White Industries FINISHED pg21

[Peachy!]

So…. The Claud Butler Titanius….

What do we know? Well apart from it having a name that sounds like either it was coined by Peter Andre or after a bell ringing inner ear complaint, not much..

***EDIT***
GERMAN LIMITED EDITION BROCHURE


In August of 2013 ‘Bodrobert’ added some pictures of one that he found advertised in Hungary onto page 3 of this thread;claud butler lugged Reynolds something. Pics!

Nothing really conclusive came of this… and when I contacted Rob this year he told me he had decided not to buy it..

One had appeared a while back on Polish e-bay, frame number F4I 00636 but it was described as having loose or unsafe tubes….


Then back in January 2019 ‘Stompy’ an ex-pat, posted this from Croatia; Claud Butler titanium(?) info/identification
A Titanius with BB stamp F4I 00632

This piqued my curiosity so I sent a PM to see if it was for sale….. which it wasn’t.. but nothing ventured.. :xmas-wink:
Anyway, last week, Stompy got back to me as he decided he wasn’t going to do anything with the frame and wanted it to go to a good home… where better than the bosom of Peachy’s collection?.. :xmas-big-grin:

So lets have a closer look at what we now have….

First off, graphics & badges… well the main tube font was used in ’95, ’96, ’97 & ’98 but… that head badge/graphic was around only in ’93, ’94 & ’95 so by a process of elimination and with no other evidence, let’s call it ’95 for now.

It’s not in any of the catalogues I own, and strangely the three have only appeared in eastern Europe… (Poland, Croatia & Hungary)

It weighs in at a respectable 3lb 14oz…. in comparison a ’97 Cape Wrath in Cro-Mo weighs 5lb 5oz


It’s definitely made of two different metals, one for the head tube, seat cluster, bottom bracket shell and rear triangle, the other for the three main tubes… construction is interesting, as the diamond shapes look like a kind of clip in extra location or security to back-up what I presume is some sort of adhesive bond. As for what these materials are I’m not certain, but they are definitely ‘hard’ metals not aluminium… this is pretty much sell evident from the tight welding which looks very much like a Cro-mo weld, but neither respond to a magnet…(un like Cro-mo steel).
The main tubes have a ‘warm’ tint to them and the rest a cool polished look rather than cold/blue chrome. The odd red rust stains were all easily wiped off so one would assume these were dried out rust 'wet wash' left over from steel bolts etc as there is absolutely no evidence of corrosion.


Gut feeling from 30 years of arseing about with materials?
I think the main tubes are Titanium and the rest is polished Stainless Steel.

I wonder, is there a way to test this theory?

 

[MattiThundrrr]

Re: 1995 Claud Butler Titanius #F4100632

Most of the tests I know of for titanium involve scraping, grinding, or filing, which I assume are not options due to the scarcity of your source. I'll share them for the benefit of the other two who have frames in Eastern Europe.
Sand or file off a bit to ensure you have bare metal, and not a coating. Titanium should be much darker than aluminum, more like a shiny dark silver.
If you have bare metal, titanium anodizes. Place a moist paper towel on it, apply 9 volts, and you should get a light tan colour. 2x9 volts should get you a dark purple.
If you grind it, titanium will give off bright blue white sparks, and any shavings will burn similar to magnesium.

 

[Peachy!]

Re: 1995 Claud Butler Titanius #F4100632

Most of the tests I know of for titanium involve scraping, grinding, or filing, which I assume are not options due to the scarcity of your source. I'll share them for the benefit of the other two who have frames in Eastern Europe.
Sand or file off a bit to ensure you have bare metal, and not a coating. Titanium should be much darker than aluminum, more like a shiny dark silver.
If you have bare metal, titanium anodizes. Place a moist paper towel on it, apply 9 volts, and you should get a light tan colour. 2x9 volts should get you a dark purple.
If you grind it, titanium will give off bright blue white sparks, and any shavings will burn similar to magnesium.

Ok, cheers... perhaps I can experiment inside the seat tube....

 

[legrandefromage]

Re: 1995 Claud Butler Titanius #F4100632

That looks pinned together - force fit tubes with the diamonds showing the lugs' internal tubing showing through.

Peugeot did a few aluminium frames with their 'Pechiney' process - this looks similar but you'd need a danson67 to tell what the whats are

 

[Peachy!]

Re: 1995 Claud Butler Titanius #F4100632

That looks pinned together - force fit tubes with the diamonds showing the lugs' internal tubing showing through.

Peugeot did a few aluminium frames with their 'Pechiney' process - this looks similar but you'd need a danson67 to tell what the whats are

Yes, something like that, except the diamond windows aren’t just showing the lug underneath, the lug material is raised up as some kind of locator (possibly what you meant?) and what I thought was just a build-up of crud does look/feel like an adhesive....

Here's a close up of the inside of the seat tube cluster to confirm both tube and lug material are way too thin to be aluminium, this is where I may test with my Dremel

 

[1552]

Re:

Good looking frame, never seen one before.

Excuse my possible retardedness,but surely the decals give it away?
Titanium main tubes, steel lugs.

Looking at a zoomed in view of the BB area, I can see what looks like machining ribs on the diamond bit.
Or the lack of sleep is causing me to miss the point completely

 

[Peachy!]

Re: Re:

Good looking frame, never seen one before.

Excuse my possible retardedness,but surely the decals give it away?
Titanium main tubes, steel lugs.

Looking at a zoomed in view of the BB area, I can see what looks like machining ribs on the diamond bit.
Or the lack of sleep is causing me to miss the point completely

:xmas-big-grin: Yes, we are pretty sure the main tubes are Titanium... :xmas-big-grin:
The reason behind the questioning or I guess the request for confirmation or even having this as a discussion point is that during the mid to late 90's Claud Butler only ever advertised bikes with a "Titanium finish" these being Cro-mo with a tint in the lacquer, often then incorrectly advertised as Titanium on e-bay.

So really this early part of what will become a build thread is more to discuss what the rear triangle/head tube material is (it’s definitely not aluminium, chrome plated steel or Cro-mo)

Also, the fact that these three bikes that have surfaced in Eastern Europe over the past 6 years are the only "Titanius" that I have any knowledge of.
Never having been advertised in the UK but having the Brigg factory frame number stickers on the lower part of the seat tube. incidentally none of the thousands of bikes coming out of Brigg when it was still manufacturing frames ever had a number stamped into the BB shell, so one could assume these frames were made by someone else.

I guess I’m just hoping beyond hope that someone will pop up saying “I worked in R&D department at the Falcon factory Brigg back in 1995 and we did have a far eastern manufacturer offer up a way of producing a light weight Titanium/Stainless Steel frame at low cost, but we found inconsistencies in the jointing system, an East European distributor offered to take them off of our hands and sell them in countries not signed up to European union trading standards etc etc”
And maybe the fact that only a very few have survived is because the rest fell apart? :facepalm: :xmas-cool:

 

[1552]

Re:

That right there is a perfectly sensible answer

 

[BoyBurning]

Re:

TITANIUS:

Ti - Titanium
Ta - Tantalum
Ni - Nickel

US...? Just put on the end to make it sound better?

Suspect the name largely comes from the mix used in the titanium alloy as suggested above.

That would make a Beta-titanium alloy, with corrosion / finish properties similar to stainless steel which would also explain how the rust spots were removed so easily.

Can you see any reason why all the tubes and lugs are not of the same material?

 

[Peachy!]

Re: Re:

Can you see any reason why all the tubes and lugs are not of the same material?

I can’t guarantee it, just seems unlikely. In its unpolished state (inside the seat tube for example) they are very different colours, also if it was all the same, why not weld all of them?