Mark Hoskin's Reports On Visits
To Various Bicycle Manufacturing Facilities In Europe

VELOFLEX

Veloflex, last holdout for Italians who know how to make good tyres. Born from the closing down of homegrown manufacturing of Clement and then Vittoria the five people here are all looking stressed. It's a normal emotion, for Veloflex sell all they produce, and don't want to take the risks involved in increasing their staff, or the numbers of machines needed so they all work flat out to try and keep up. Machines? But Veloflex tyres are handmade.....Yes, but think of stitching a tubular using a needle and thimble, or heating the moulds for the tread bands using some sort of open fire..machines are used, but only when it helps make the work faster and more accurate, not in place of the human hand, but guided by it.

The method of construction is simple and elegant. Cotton is used for all casings, they are firm believers in robust casings, so there is no place for the more delicate silks. Cloth is made by a simple machine and a pair of hands, it's endless bands formed by individual fibres being laid on a drum and impregnated with latex. The fibre is angled at 45 degrees and laid in two plies which are biased (place your hand flat on a table with your fingers together and lay the other hand on top of it at an angle, that is the form the fibre takes) for strength and flexibility. This is then cut into the appropriate width for a casing, the next step depends on if it is for a clincher tyre, or a tubular. In either case the edges are folded over to either add reinforcement for stitching, or to hold a Kevlar bead (Veloflex do not produce any steel bead tyres). If it's a tubular, they are just bonded using latex, for a clincher they are folded over with the bead inside and a separate chafing strip is added to the outside to prevent damage from the rim (and errant tyre levers). After curing this casing is then (for tubulars) fitted with a chafing strip on the inside which is sewn in place along one edge. The tube is inserted (Veloflex use butyl coated latex tubes) and the other edge of the strip is sewn to enclose the tube. All sewing is performed by the two females on the staff, they have a better eye and more nimble fingers for this kind of work. The tubulars then have the casing edges sewn together using linen and the base tape is glued in place and then left to cure. The finished casings then have their tread bands glued in place by hand with simple jigs and a roller (the casing is mounted in a jig that is able to be rotate, this has a stationary arm which holds a section of tread band and allows the operator to make sure it is laid in the correct plane. Straightness is checked purely by the naked eye, it's more accurate than using a machine (NASA type budgets might produce something to beat it, but this is the real world...) and repeatable. Interestingly enough the two people who do this job don't look as stressed, they look calm. The completed green tyres are then left to cure, no heat is used (said production produces a vulcanised tyre, which may allow 100% reliability in the casing/tread band join, but the heat hardens everything too much and makes for a less flexible tyre. It would also mean heat resistant materials having to be used, which adds weight. By way of comparison a Veloflex Servizio Corsa weighs 155gm, the similar Pariba Formula SL 175gm.

Life is changing even here though. While tubulars are for the moment safe, caused by private label demand for professional cycling teams each year, Gabrielle Colleoni wants to stop making them so he can free up people to make clinchers. It's simple economics, they only have so many pairs of hands and so much production time. The far simpler and easier to produce clinchers are what is demanded on the whole by the purchasing public and they can't make enough to fulfil the orders they receive. So if they cut out tubular production they will increase total numbers of tyres produced. It's a tough choice, and unfortunately is being forced upon them by sheer public demand actually created by the big boys and their marketing departments. If Andre Dugast were to stop as well there would be no old world style handmade tubulars being produced in Europe. The day that happens will be the end of an era. It's enough to make me pity the riders who started after about 1985, for they possibly never had the pleasure of learning the joys of the many different tubulars companies like Clement used to make in the tubulars heyday and what it was to pick your tyre/wheel combination for a particular event. It was fun..really.

Mark.