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Let's talk Schwinn steel tubular welded rims

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Schwinn Sales West

I live for the CABE
Schwinn made many of their own steel rims at the Chicago factory. The tubular steel welded rims were one of the key selling features on the showroom sales floor quality board. They had a Schwinn rim cut in half, and a standard rim cut in half to demonstrate the strength of the Schwinn Tubular Rim. Not many know how these were made. Sorry I do not have any photos, so here's my memory details.

They were made on a tube mill, much like electrical conduit tubing is manufactured. They began with a flat roll of steel. It was loaded on to the end of a tubing mill. This machine was a very long series of rollers that bent the flat metal into a U shape, and then back over itself into the shape of the desired rim model. Looking at it in action, you would think "there's no way" that a straight metal flat sheet could be formed into a rim shape. Remember this roll of metal was hundreds of feet long, and the rims were a different shape as this single roll went through different stages of the machine. They had two serrated rollers that were positive/negative charged and they welded the inside edges of the rim to the outside edge. This made the Schwinn rims double thick in the high stress area with the spoke holes. The rim was still like a single straight pipe at this point.

After the welding process the "single pipe rim shape" went through a series of rollers that curved the rim into a circle and cut them off. If you ever watch, "How it's Made" on the Science Channel, they have a lead in with a machine makes springs. As they come out of the machine, they are sliced off, that's the way the Schwinn rims were cut after the curving process. Then they electric welded the cut ends together. In my mind it was like a giant spot weld. I can silver solder, braze, gas weld, stick weld, Mig weld, Tig weld, but I cannot truly understand what they called Electro Weld. Obviously, it was a production welding process that Schwinn used on many different applications over many years.

One of the problem areas for rim production over the years was final finishing the welded areas. Many were "undercut" or you might say they were ground with gouges. Not a big deal on a coaster brake model, but it was a PITA on any caliper brake equipped model with the thumping each time the welded seam went through the brake blocks.

At this stage, they were formed, coiled to the correct desired tire size, welded together at both the center seam and the ends. They went into a piercing machine that poked holes into the tubular section. These holes were on opposing sides (tire side) of the rims. Their purpose was to allow for air pressure to flush out the acid from the chroming process. Anybody that has had old Schwinn rims replated knows the importance of removing the acids which will ruin your new chrome if not fully removed. At this point, the rims went into a machine that drilled the valve hole and all the spoke holes at the same time. Finally, the rims went to the chrome line or the paint line for final finish.

Almost all of the wheel builders were women, and they were Smooth and FAST. It looked like a women's sewing circle with all of the talking and chatting while they were lacing the hubs/spokes/rims together. After the lacing, the wheels went into a oil pressure driven Holland Machine that automatically pulled up the nipples and trued the wheels. As a former Schwinn dealer, the factory had a different view than we did on what constituted a "Trued Wheel". I believe the factory standard was "if it cleared the fork legs, it passed". The dealers had to make the wheels straight enough to work with caliper brakes. They used to put small round yellow inspector tags on the spokes. Every time we had a dealer meeting someone would tell the Schwinn management that wheel Inspector Number 76 needed to have his eyes checked. The answer was always OK, we'll check it out, next question.

The completed wheels went to have tires and tubes installed. The tires and the tubes were already assembled when they came into the factory from the rubber supplier. That's why you find bikes with inner tubes even today that say Original Equipment. I was in Arizona, and all of our bikes were always ordered with the optional Thorn Resistant Tubes on Chicago built bikes. Dealer cost $1.20 extra, retail $2.00 extra. We were bummed as Schwinn moved to different sourcing because they no longer offered the ability to special order the thick tubes. We had to change the tubes on every new bike and always had hundreds of "new" take off tubes to get rid of.

Hopefully this answers some of your Schwinn Chicago rim questions.

John
 
Schwinn made many of their own steel rims at the Chicago factory. The tubular steel welded rims were one of the key selling features on the showroom sales floor quality board. They had a Schwinn rim cut in half, and a standard rim cut in half to demonstrate the strength of the Schwinn Tubular Rim. Not many know how these were made. Sorry I do not have any photos, so here's my memory details.
Good stuff John. Here's some pics of the Quality Display board you were referring to -
https://thecabe.com/forum/threads/f...ay-complete-sales-book-all-components.145093/
 
Thank you for your historical contributions and personal insight, @Schwinn Sales West.

Coincidentally, I just found these in with the S-2’s from a ‘79 Spitfire I went through a few days ago.

CB7DD5F7-5272-4EED-AEDD-DE9FF9740571.jpeg


2600C3A7-5F94-4CA7-9632-4CAFE3E46048.png
 
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I've found Schwinn-made chrome steel S5 and S6 rims to generally be somewhat rougher in production than their utilitarian British counterparts, particularly around the weld. This tends to be more pronounced on the later rims from the late 1960s and later. It doesn't bother me all that much, and unless the grind-down of the weld was really, really bad, they function alright with the caliper brakes. Often, the inside of the rim will need some additional grinding at the weld because sharp edges remain. Again, it's more pronounced on the later rims. The attention to detail on the 1940s-50s rims was a step above that on the 1970s rims I have.

The Stainless S6 rims that went on the better bikes like the 3-speed Continental of the late 1940s are particularly nice to have. Their production value seems a step up and on a par with the better British rims of that era, such as the Dunlop Stainless rims. There are also the very rare dural sporting rims, which one would be extremely lucky to own even just one good pair of.
 
I've found Schwinn-made chrome steel S5 and S6 rims to generally be somewhat rougher in production than their utilitarian British counterparts, particularly around the weld. This tends to be more pronounced on the later rims from the late 1960s and later. It doesn't bother me all that much, and unless the grind-down of the weld was really, really bad, they function alright with the caliper brakes. Often, the inside of the rim will need some additional grinding at the weld because sharp edges remain. Again, it's more pronounced on the later rims. The attention to detail on the 1940s-50s rims was a step above that on the 1970s rims I have.

The Stainless S6 rims that went on the better bikes like the 3-speed Continental of the late 1940s are particularly nice to have. Their production value seems a step up and on a par with the better British rims of that era, such as the Dunlop Stainless rims. There are also the very rare dural sporting rims, which one would be extremely lucky to own even just one good pair of.
Thanks, I never knew Schwinn made a Stainless Steel rim. Seems very plausible, since Stainless is just steel, with a little chromium tossed into the mix. They would had used the same process to manufacture, just used a different roll of steel. I knew they used Stainless on the fenders of the more deluxe models. I never observed them making fenders.

I would agree with your observations on the quality level of the early rims being better than the later rims.
 
Hi John!
Great info on the rims! I was wondering if you may have any Schwinn documents or any sort of proof from Schwinn about the 1945 balloon tire bicycles they produced?
1945 was B.P. (before Palmer) so it's a little fuzzy.

1945 was a new start up, not much new happened to my knowledge. I believe there was still a lot of material shortages due to the war. I do have a good collection of old consumer catalogs, but I don't think they were an annual catalog release thing, like we saw in the later years. The early catalogs were artist drawn (lithographs I believe) not photos like you see in the 60's and 70's catalogs. The artwork on the early catalogs was beautiful.

What specific questions do you have about 1945 production?

John
 
Outstanding rim design.
I’m not sure how these tags were used as a sales display, but I thought they were pretty cool.
EC7B1443-B415-458E-A4F1-66FABC593773.jpeg


B3A81321-2800-423F-8CFE-3624D44EF1D6.jpeg


94333BA4-14BF-437F-84EA-C3642D229F6A.jpeg

Then there’s this Lobdell-Emery advertisement from May 1949,
American Bicyclist.
9361B5B0-BEF8-410F-9ADC-17EE9C2C0BE0.jpeg


571FEE99-F570-445A-B02A-415FADAB4290.jpeg

Note the Tubular rim made exactly like the Schwinn S series Tubular Rims.
Hmmm!
So who actually made these rims?
Schwinn or Lobdell?
🤔
 
Outstanding rim design.
I’m not sure how these tags were used as a sales display, but I thought they were pretty cool.
View attachment 1775132

View attachment 1775133

View attachment 1775134
Then there’s this Lobdell-Emery advertisement from May 1949,
American Bicyclist.
View attachment 1775135

View attachment 1775136
Note the Tubular rim made exactly like the Schwinn S series Tubular Rims.
Hmmm!
So who actually made these rims?
Schwinn or Lobdell?
🤔
LOL, Looks like Schwinn ruffled some feathers. Maybe they sold some production to the aftermarket to help pay for all of the expensive tube rolling equipment I saw in the Schwinn Factory. I have never seen a Schwinn built rim, "without the Schwinn name stamped into it" in my time starting in 1958. I would never doubt that anything was possible.

One thing for sure, Araya from Japan made the highest quality tubular steel rims I have ever seen. They were all 1.75 and 2.125 sizes, but I never saw a 1 3/4 S7 style from Araya. I used to use hundreds of Araya steel 20 x 2.125 rims to build heavy duty wheel sets when the BMX models were just starting out. 36 hole, 105 ga spokes, strong enough to put on a Harley.

John
 
Possibly, Lobdell developed the rim, since they were the established rim manufacturer.
Schwinn liked what they saw, so they bought the exclusive right to manufacture the rims?

There’s no way, one company copied the other with something so unique without generating a lawsuit.

It stands to reason that Lobdell,
“Rims are our Business”
Invented, and developed the manufacturing process for the Tubular Rim, and then sold it to Schwinn, with an exclusive agreement.

But, who knows?
I just thought that 1949 Lobdell advertisement was interesting.
The text is pretty clear, it says,
“Our New Tubular Rim”
 
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