A Rock Ring? It Sounds Heavy!

As I've mentioned, I worked on and off in bike shops from the mid-1970s until the mid-1990s.  In one of those shops, I came across a bottom bracket lock ring  tool from Hozan.  Like other tools the Japanese company manufactured at the time, it looked sturdy and functional, if not as refined as its Campagnolo or even Park Tool counterparts.  

But it wasn't the finish or design that I remember.  Rather, it was the package.

It's easy to dismiss "Rock" as a simple typo.  But there are still Americans who mock the Japanese for their difficulty in pronouncing the "L" sound which, as I understand, doesn't exist in Japanese.  So I wondered whether the importer or whoever packaged the wrench was upset that some "Rittre Reague" kids from the Land of the Rising Son beat his son's baseball team in a tournament. 

The Real Uses Of Bike Tools

Do you have a Campagnolo corkscrew?

Or a Park Tool pizza cutter?

Or a Maillard Helicomatic freewheel remover with a built-in bottle opener?

Well, then, you are misguided.  A real cyclist knows you don't need food- (or drink-) specific utensils:

I mean, you can eat pizza with a bicycle fork.  Right?

Well, all right:  As a New Yorker of Italian heritage, I would never, ever use anything besides my fingers to handle  Neopolitan or Sicilian slices. (A person of my background also does not allow any sort of topping on her pizza.  Pineapples?  Barbecued beef?  They're like chocolate chips in a bagel, as far as I'm concerned.)

So what do you eat with your cone wrench?

When You Come To A Fork In The Road

Having worked as a bike mechanic, I know the importance of having the right tool for the job.

There are some situations, though, when you just don't have it.  So what do you do?

Is It Your Father's Tool Kit? Or Is It "Retro"?

When it was new, the Peugeot in yesterday's post more than likely came with a Mafac tool kit.

Mafac took kit

Back in those days, Raleigh bicycles came with what is still commonly known as the "Raleigh spanner". (It is English, after all, so it's a "spanner", not a "wrench".)

Raleigh spanner

If you have an old Raleigh or almost any bike with derailleurs and caliper brakes made before the 1980's, that spanner or tool kit are very useful.   And for "freebies", they were actually quite well-made.  However, they are not very useful on most of today's bikes or components.

I still have a soft spot for them, though.  Other companies made similar items.  For example, REG of Italy--which also made water bottle cages and other accessories--made a tool kit very similar to the Mafac.  The REG came in a cute red pouch, made of thicker but more brittle material than the black (or sometimes brown) pouches that held the Mafac tools and Dissoplast patches and glue.  

There was another tool kit that was, essentially, the Mafac minus the socket wrench and the wrench with the spoke keys.  It came in a pouch with a similar shape to the Mafac, but with thinner but more supple material:  like something you might find on a rather fashionable piece of luggage.  And it was embossed with the name of the bike maker that included them with their new machines:  Gitane.

Gitane tool kit

Just for its uniquess, that is my favorite set of retro-tools.  Now, as for Gitane bikes:  They could be the very epitome of Frenchness. Or not.  They could be wonderful or awful.  But they were known for not sticking to the specifications lists in their catalogues:  When I was working in bike shops, we used to joke that it was the reason why Gitane didn't make their catlogues very available!  Sometimes that worked for the better:  One or two of their models would come with Sugino Maxi or Takagi Tourney cotterless cranksets instead of the steel cottered models so common on European bikes of that time, or a SunTour derailleur for one from Simplex or Huret.  Other times, they just substituted something that was just as bad, or a little less bad, than the original specification.

But I digress.  I always thought their tool kit was neat, even if it wasn't different from Mafac's.  And, oh, while we're on the subject, you've surely seen "dogbone" or "dumbbell" wrenches.  I had one of those when that was about the only multi-tool available besides the Raleigh spanner or Campagnolo T-wrench.

Campagnolo T-Wrench

It seems that someone wanted to combine all of the "retro" tool kits into one--complete with tire irons. (Yes, we used to call them that because, well, they were made from iron, or cheap steel.)  And, because it's a "gift" item, the resulting kit comes in a faux-decorator box.

"Gentlemen's" tool  kit

I'll admit, it is kinda cute.  But because it's a "gentlemen's" kit, I'm not qualified to own one.  Nor was I ever!

A Bike Spanner That Isn't Raleigh

If you bought a Raleigh bicycle before the 1970s, it might have come with this:

Even if you have never owned a Raleigh, there's a good chance that you've come across the Raleigh spanner (or what Yanks call "wrench").  You might even have one.  I did, for a long time.  I don't know whether I loaned it and never got it back, or simply lost it.

Anyway, Raleigh wasn't the only British bike maker to offer a spanner.  Check out this, from Claud Butler:

Like Raleigh's tool, the Claud Butler spanner has a hooked end for a bottom bracket lock ring.  I am guessing that the
hex side of the wrench fit the bottom bracket cup--or, possibly, the headset.  In the 1960s--when, it seems, the tool in the photo was made--if a customer bought a frame, it was as often as not supplied with those components.

Claud Butler is long gone, and bikes under his name, and Holdsworth, have been made by other British bicycle manufacturers for some time.  CB also offers a line of tools similar to those of other bike manufacturers, but when Claud was still alive, they had their own discrete line, which were probably made by Cyclo or some other Birmingham bike parts company.