rickpaulos

The 1960s fillet brass brazed models do not come up for sale very often. I have two. They still demand good prices if they are in very good condition.

The EF models are every where for dirt cheap to free. I have about 50 waiting for conversions and I get about 10 to 20 every year. There were 3 Schwinn dealers (one dating back to 1896) where I live and they sold a lot of the lower priced Schwinns. The frames are mostly indestructible and supplied with lousy brakes and gears and perhaps the heaviest 27" rims ever made. I have converted scores to single speed bikes. My preferred build is to use 26" aluminum rims with 1.5 to 1.75 tires with a coaster brake. The flat blade fork on the Varsity has more room for bigger tires. The tubular forks on the Continental and the other variantes are limited to 1.5" . I remove the brakes, derailleurs, the large sprocket. Add flat bars. That takes about 9 pounds of weight off the bike. Cutting off the cable stops really helps clean up the look and removes the flesh grabbers.

Here is a link to some of the single speed conversions I've done.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/rickpau...th/52154339641

This is a 1973 Varsity I resto-modded last year for the 50th RAGBRAI.

Small cog

Just to say thank you to everyone who has taken the time to respond, you have given me what I asked and a whole lot more, it is good to see people renovating, restoring and restomodding these lovely old bikes which is pretty much what I do usually to old Raleigh which are fairly abundant this side of the pond. I am a retired toolmaker with a small lathe and milling machine and apart from repairing and cleaning up parts I like to make things fit which are not supposed to and replacing rusty old steel components with new in aluminium, stainless steel and occasionally titanium. To give you an idea my everyday transport through the winter has been this 1950 Raleigh Lenton which with the addition of some alloy components from the 1970s has become a very usable bike, I hope to find a Schwinn in need of some TLC and do the same sometime.



And how it arrived literally saved from the scrapheap at my local bike shop.

Fissile

That's a nice color. I don't think that's Schwinn's factory copper color. I recall Schwinn copper color as being a bit darker. Is that an automobile color? If so, can you provide the paint code?

rickpaulos

I wanted to get the Varsity gold plated* but I could not find anyone to do an object as large as the bike frame so I settled for powder coat. I told them I wanted gold, they did a super chrome with a gold overlay of some sort. Like any color there are many versions. Even on this bike the gold spokes, the gold tape, the gold housing, the gold seat and the gold frame are all not the same.

To see what Coppertone was, this is a 1964 Traveler I rebuilt many years ago. I kept the original paint. 1964 was one of the last years before Schwinn started cutting costs. Switching from chrome plated parts to zinc, Stainless fenders with chome stays to Chrome with galvanized stays. I recall I got 4 bikes to get all the best parts for one. Gold chain. I did finally track down the seat I wanted which isn't on the bike in most of the photos. Schwinn had 7 versions of the S saddles ranging from the steel pan kids seat up to the deluxe model with the chrome bumper.
More photos here:
1964 Schwinn Traveler Coppertone rehab album
https://www.flickr.com/photos/rickpau...th/49409906781



* The story is for one of the Schwinn dealer conventions in the 1960s or 1970s they had a gold plated Varsity as a door prize. The contest was "How many parts are there in a Varsity". Well that's a loaded question. Just what is a part? Is a derailleur a part or do you count every single piece, each rivet, each plate, each ball bearing, each tube on the frame, etc? I did see a photo of a bike that was purported to be that bike but only the chromed steel parts were gold plated.

There are a lot of Schwinn fans and collectors and experts. At its peak, Schwinn was manufacturing over 1 million bikes a year. The first million bike year was 1968. They peaked in 1974 at the height of the bike boom but by then they were importing some models so the sales vs made numbers are confused a bit. Schwinn was one of the top 6 bike companies in the USA (AMF, Columbia, Huffy, Murray, Ross) but Schwinn bikes were better built and finished (on top)* than the others. They would triple plate chromed parts where most others didn't. In the 1950s, Schwinn stopped making bikes for other companies to focus on their own name. They built their dealer network nation wide so there were Schwinn specific bike shops with big showrooms and trained dealers and mechanics. They famously obtained the right to sell their bikes directly to dealers in a case that went to the USA Supreme Court. The other brands were mostly sold via retailers like department stores, hardware stores, car tire dealers, gas stations that had little to no support for bikes. Many of those were branded with each retailers own brand name. Schwinn manufactured a full range of bikes but other companies sure had more outlandish models. Overall Schwinn was a bit conservative and often missed out on the latest fads. They focused on the USA market so Schwinn is a bit of a mystery in many counties.

For most of the EF models, Schwinn had a "finish on top" policy where they would clean up the flash from the ef process on the top side of the joints where it was viable on the showroom. The undersides were often pretty rough, especially inside the stay to rear dropout joints. Anyone who has repainted a EF bike would take the time to clean up those nasty joints before repainting. Even if they got an exact paint & decal match, that's dead giveaway it's repainted.

SirMike1983 

I love those 1950s-60s era Travelers. The welded frames are on the heavy side, but the dimensions are comfortable and they come in several sizes. The extras on those Travelers made them pretty luxurious. The luxurious, US-made Traveler model was one of the models cut when Schwinn went through the later 1960s era cost-cutting. I tend to agree that the later bikes lack something those earlier Travelers had. I ended up with three Travelers (1957, 1959, and 1964) - I liked the model so much I bought it three times, I guess you could say. None of mine are coppertone though (I think Schwinn's coppertone was a nicer color than Raleigh's gold). My '64 is a black 23-24 inch frame. It's heavy but fun to ride. Schwinn later repurposed the name for a Japanese-made line of bikes.

Velo Mule

I worked in a Schwinn dealership from about 1980 to about 1982. We had a tall customer that wanted a Continetal and only a Continental. He was a bit of a charactor, but anyone that knew exactly what they want and were willing to pay for it and wait for it would be. The bike was not custom as he would often say, but a special order. I did not know it was brazed. I always thought that it was electro-forged the same as any other Continental or Varsity. This is good to know. By the way we rode all the bikes assembled. This was a challange.

Boy, was he happy when the bike was ready. Thinking back, it must have been hard for him to ride anything that was a production bike, so that makes total sense.

Fissile

Thank you for the detailed reply, I really appreciate it. As for gold plating a large item, custom car hobbyists use a vinyl wrap that looks like gold. I guess it would be tricky wrapping a bike frame but not impossible. This stuff is not very durable, so it's not practical on a bike that you'd actually want to ride, and hiding the seems wouldn't be easy. Here is an example of gold colored vinyl wrap. Hover the mouse over the product to see a car wrapped in that particular shade.

In 1955 GM built a gold Chevrolet to mark the milestone of its 50 millionth car. The gold 55 Chevy had hundreds of small parts plated in 24 carat gold. The paint used on the body panels contained actual gold flake in the mix.

Of course there is always gold leaf, but leaf is incredibly fragile.

It is possible to electroplate gold at home. I've done DIY nickel, but never gold because gold plating solution is incredibly expensive. You would need thousands of dollars worth a solution to have enough to immerse a bike frame. The place where I buy my plating supplies sells gallon jugs of 24 carat gold plating solution. The stuff costs $800/gal. It technically would be possible to brush plate gold onto a bike frame, but that that would be very tedious and it would take a lot of skill to get an even, streak-free plate. Brush plating. BTW, I've done both bath and brush plating at home.

I have a Schwinn EF frame that I want to paint. I was thinking about a burnt orange color. Nissan offers a color called 'monarch orange'. Think I'll go down to the auto body supply and get them to mix up a pint.