Bikes of America (and Canada!)
- Thread starter Canuk
- Start date
Canuk
Senior Retro Guru
Pretty much the first CF bikes ever sold in the market, and this particular one was number 22 of a small batch hand built at home by the engineer who designed it (Larry Blake). If the bike looks familiar, it was the direct pre-cursor of the Exxon Graftek. The Engineer who built this Line Seeker #22, sold the design to Exxon for them to build and market it (with later modifications) as their bike.”
Canuk
Senior Retro Guru
Sam Braxton began his bicycle career in 1969 when he got a job assembling and repairing bicycles for a local sporting goods shop. The job was short-lived, but Sam continued working from his home and opened Braxton Bike Shop in 1970 with the help of his wife, Shirley, and their sons Bart and Dalt.
Sam took an Albert Eisentraut course and began building frames in 1974; however, he credited much of his later success to the time he spent with Jack and Norm Taylor, and often said it was Norm who taught him how to apply heat and braze correctly.
The Taylor influence is readily apparent in Braxton’s frames, from the reversed placement of the rear brake on early models to the custom fabricated and brazed on racks and the gothic font Sam used for his decals. A great many of Braxton’s expedition touring bikes were styled in the mold of the Taylor “Rough Stuff” model, a style Sam came to call the Combie for its ability to function well on all surfaces.”
Braxton Bike Shop thrived as a full service sales and repair business and Sam’s framebuilding career got a great boost from the shop’s reputation as “an oasis for the cyclotourist” among touring cyclists associated with the Bikecentennial organization (now Adventure Cycling) headquartered in Missoula. Others in the industry regarded him both as a guru of cycling knowledge and a curmudgeon with deeply set opinions – more than a few colleagues recall almost coming to blows with Sam about one thing or another, before forming a friendship with him. Braxton passed away in 1988 after a short battle with cancer, having built approximately 580 frames; at the time of his death, he had a 3 year backlog of frame orders.
Sam took an Albert Eisentraut course and began building frames in 1974; however, he credited much of his later success to the time he spent with Jack and Norm Taylor, and often said it was Norm who taught him how to apply heat and braze correctly.
The Taylor influence is readily apparent in Braxton’s frames, from the reversed placement of the rear brake on early models to the custom fabricated and brazed on racks and the gothic font Sam used for his decals. A great many of Braxton’s expedition touring bikes were styled in the mold of the Taylor “Rough Stuff” model, a style Sam came to call the Combie for its ability to function well on all surfaces.”
Braxton Bike Shop thrived as a full service sales and repair business and Sam’s framebuilding career got a great boost from the shop’s reputation as “an oasis for the cyclotourist” among touring cyclists associated with the Bikecentennial organization (now Adventure Cycling) headquartered in Missoula. Others in the industry regarded him both as a guru of cycling knowledge and a curmudgeon with deeply set opinions – more than a few colleagues recall almost coming to blows with Sam about one thing or another, before forming a friendship with him. Braxton passed away in 1988 after a short battle with cancer, having built approximately 580 frames; at the time of his death, he had a 3 year backlog of frame orders.
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