Categories: Reverence

Reverence: Campagnolo Tools

photo by italian_bicycles

Exposure to religion in my youth was by way of a brief dose of sunday school at the local Unitarian church. The point there, evidently, was to learn about other religions and turtles. If a point was being made, I missed it. When Catholic friends of mine came over for the weekend I would accompany them to the closest Catholic church and we would endure the mass together, the experience leaving us just as clueless as the moment before we walked in.

A girlfriend of @Rob briefly worked for the English bike company Raleigh in Boston, Massachusetts. These were the Jan Raas, Didi Thurau, Ti-Raleigh years, where Raleigh made beautiful bikes and their team was one of the dreadnaughts of professional cycling. I was visiting this friend at the Raleigh offices, which to my eyes seemed like any other office: fluorescent lighting, linoleum tiled floors, men in coats and ties. It was uncontaminated by bicycles or red and yellow  kits. This place was not cool. My friend ushered me into a nondescript room, pulled out an enormous sliding drawer and showed me something she knew was cool.

In this sliding drawer was a complete set of Campagnolo bike tools, all set in blue foam cut outs, each tool nestled in its perfectly shaped place. I didn’t fall to my knees but I must have gasped. Each tool was a work of art: form and function in unison. Each tool designed for a specific task in the wedding of components to frame. The tools had a uniform silver finish. There were facing and chasing tools with beautifully milled cutting teeth of high speed steel. I’m serious about reverence here. I had never seen anything like this. The seeds to my Italophile religion were sown. I was already a devout fan of the components but did the tools have to look this fantastic? What did this say about a company? To me it said-these tools are designed and made to make sure Campagnolo components work perfectly on any frame. What goes into the tools goes into everything else. The passion, the design, the tools and the components are one. Perhaps the intention was never there to make cool looking tools, maybe it was just a by-product of making cool looking components. What else could they do?

I had found my religion. I never needed the complete tool set, I was never a professional bike mechanic. I do own a few civilian Campa tools: some cone wrenches, the peanut butter wrench, a T-handle wrench, a 10-speed chain tool. These are beautiful tools. Park makes functional tools, no one would say they are beautiful. Why make a functional tool beautiful? Is a beautiful tool a better tool? It is when one is making a living wielding them. Pride in your tools reflects pride in your work.

I was going to write that those days are over, adding beauty adds cost and the bottom line is everything now. Then I remembered my Lezyne pedal wrench. It is functional as it removes pedals without impaling knuckles onto greasy chainrings (and opens beer bottles) but it is beautiful because it has a wide smooth machined aluminum handle bolted onto the body of the wrench. It lacks the refined industrial design of a Campagnolo tool but it is beautiful in its own way.

[dmalbum path=”/velominati.com/content/Photo Galleries/j.andrews3@comcast.net/campy tools/”/]

Gianni

Gianni has left the building.

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  • @scaler911

    @Dan_R

    I had a wet vagina after reading the article, then I saw the clogs. And the Buick. Take me now.

    I get sweet feelings over the Hozan cast iron truing stand. Art personified. I am very partial to my own Park shop grade spoke wrenches. They fell heavy like a tool should. Being a Campagnolo heavy shop, I can see my future is bright.

    VLVV!

    Ok. Can y'all officially declare that I'm no longer the biggest sexual miscreant around these parts?

    Possibly, at least you only have problems determining other's genders.  (or is that someone else, you a Kiwi?)

  • @scaler911

    @Dan_R

    I had a wet vagina after reading the article, then I saw the clogs. And the Buick. Take me now.

    I get sweet feelings over the Hozan cast iron truing stand. Art personified. I am very partial to my own Park shop grade spoke wrenches. They fell heavy like a tool should. Being a Campagnolo heavy shop, I can see my future is bright.

    VLVV!

    Ok. Can y'all officially declare that I'm no longer the biggest sexual miscreant around these parts?

    Aye

  • @scaler911

    @Dan_R

    I had a wet vagina after reading the article, then I saw the clogs. And the Buick. Take me now.

    I get sweet feelings over the Hozan cast iron truing stand. Art personified. I am very partial to my own Park shop grade spoke wrenches. They fell heavy like a tool should. Being a Campagnolo heavy shop, I can see my future is bright.

    VLVV!

    Ok. Can y'all officially declare that I'm no longer the biggest sexual miscreant around these parts?

    Um, biggest was never really the descriptor which came to mind...

  • @Buck Rogers

    @sthilzy

    @frank

    @Cyclops

    Check it out, I found this sweet picture of you.

    Those clogs are used to smack down the quill stem bolt.

    Man, that Dude is Tobias in an early form. I wonder if Ron Howard is a Campa fan?

    Now, for an arrested development geek, you should know that this is an improbable suggestion; the aforementioned trained analrapist is also a never nude. c'mon Buck, had high expectations of you!

  • @scaler911

    @Dan_R

    I had a wet vagina after reading the article, then I saw the clogs. And the Buick. Take me now.

    I get sweet feelings over the Hozan cast iron truing stand. Art personified. I am very partial to my own Park shop grade spoke wrenches. They fell heavy like a tool should. Being a Campagnolo heavy shop, I can see my future is bright.

    VLVV!

    Ok. Can y'all officially declare that I'm no longer the biggest sexual miscreant around these parts?

    Hell no. You still appear to be confused about gender, which if memory serves is the source of your problems. Dan R appears to be a MALE, while a Vagina is what FEMALES have.

    Frankly if you haven't sorted this out by now Mrs Scaler has a mighty power of work ahead of her.

  • I shouldn't be drawn by Campag stuff as I prefer function over form, and prefer utilitarian to fluffy Italian, and yet I already know that when I get my new #1 it won't be adorned by groupsan or bro-set but by a majestic and beautiful gruppo.  I haven't even started looking for my new #1 and yet this is as guaranteed as if Mr Visa had already been laid down.

  • The bike shops I worked at in college had full sets of Campy tools and a mechanic who knew how to properly treat them. Those of you in Ohio probably remember James Simbro.  Tools were in order, bikes worked, all was right other world.

    Fast forward 15 years and I get a part-time job at a shop here in Austin. I ask if they still have and use any Campy tools. The mechanic replies why would we? I don't work on that stuff". He didn't and still doesn't get it. he is trusted with little.

    If you want a Campy tool that the VMH will love and you'll get to use daily, order the full-size wine opener. It is art. Featured prominently in my kitchen. If the VMH ever leaves, it is not up for discussion who gets the Campy tool. It's her.

  • Very nice, Gianni! I can't say that I own any Campagnolo tools, yet that is. I went the bargain route when I needed a 10-s chain tool for my Campa chains & picked up the Park one. Works well, not beautiful, but functional. I even sheared off the pressing pin on mine & spoke to a very nice, sharp dude in MN who explained why the tool was designed like that, then mailed me a new one, free of charge. Nice! Being the son of a mechanical engineer I felt like tools were lost on me. Now that I've become a Follower I really appreciate a nice, functional tool. Nice tools, doing your own bike work, and heading out on long rides with just a few things in your pockets all are part of the same harmonic equation.

    Religion. Raised Catholic & really know nothing about it. A big waste of time for me. I do now get a real kick out of cycling on Sundays as people rush off to church, sometimes nearly running me off the road in the process, all to get into the house of god. Go figure.

    Nice wagon! My first car was a double hand-me-down Chevrolet Caprice Classic, maroon on maroon scheme. It was pretty amazing to drive that thing to high school, then college, especially when most other cars on campus were highly expensive imports. And they were purchased as gifts, not handed down. My parents eventually donated it to Salvation Army and every so often I'd see it rolling around town. Nice!

    Clogs. I still want to know who the genius is that convinced every single doctor in America (the world?) that they must wear clogs to work every day. That person deserves a huge bonus check. My doctor pals don't quite like it when I ask how doctors in the previous centuries were able to survive without a pair of jazzy clogs in funny prints for each day of the week.

    Ah, Frank! I've been meaning to ask about cool, classic bicycle tumblr sites, since it seems there is now one for everything, but I was worried about bringing them up around here. Now that the seal is broken, anyone know of any with classic (say 1970s-1990s) steel road bikes? I still haven't uncovered one.

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Gianni

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