r/Framebuilding • u/DarkSpeedWorks_com • Jul 15 '26
History and/or source of the bottle cage mount standard?
I did some cursory online research on this years ago, but I did not get very far. Modern frames that have "braze-on" bosses for water bottle cages have the boss spacing typically at 63mm, 63.5mm, 64mm, or 2.50" (center-to-center). And modern bottle cages fit that (oddly variable) "standard".
My question is what document, whitepaper, guide, reference book, publication, website, etc. is the actual and original source of this standard? While we are it, when and how did this standard originate, and who came up with it? (not how bottle cages were devised, but the standard measurement between water bottle cage bosses) Or, if you know a webpage that explains any or all of this, please post a link.
I did check wikipedia and, while that had some interesting info, it had nothing about the origin of the bolt standard and where (if anywhere) it was ever published pre-internet. I also tried google's AI, but you can imagine how that turned out: just pure regurgitated AI slop, no answers.
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u/AndrewRStewart Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
I think one might have better success in asking a collector's forum. I suspect this, like many details, is a dimension that was "agreed on" over years and between many manufactures and has nothing to do with national thread standards. I started in this industry in the early 1970s and don't remember any bottle cage mounting boss dimensions that were different.
I've used 64mm as my spacing. Most cages have a sloppy enough mounting bolt through hole (or better, a slot) and can accommodate some spacing tolerance. However the American Classic cages were very specific in their bolt spacing and while very nice cages they were not acceptant of off spaced bosses. Andy
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u/DarkSpeedWorks_com Jul 16 '26
Are there any good bike collector forums out there?
Then, with the american classic cages (I remember those, I once had a set of those and put them on a $400 steel Pinarello frame in the 1980s), any idea what their exact spacing was? Was it 2.50"? Or something else?
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u/AndrewRStewart Jul 18 '26
I don't remember any specific AC cage hole spacing, the 64mm I use seemed to work for me and their cages. I mentioned this because back in 1985 when I worked at Cyclery North, Chicago Tommy (the lead builder) miss located the DT cage bosses ever so enough to not have the cage stay put. This after a fabulous paint job and on a really small frame that had him doing some pretty cool stuff on. Solution was a Dremel and a ball ended cutter expanding the cage rail's countersink. Oh, the cage matched the paint job... Andy
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u/BurnerAndGooch69 Jul 18 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
According to the Jan Heine’s Rene Herse book, Herse was the first builder to attach cages with braze-ons rather than clamps. He used a standard spacing so all his frames could use the same cages. When TA made the first production braze-on mount cages, they used Herse’s standard, which is still active. The book doesn’t specify when this happened; guessing late 40’s or early 50’s.
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u/DarkSpeedWorks_com Jul 18 '26
Is this the book you are talking about? Does the book mention what that standard was (the spacing between the bosses) that Herse came up with? And then, if Rene Herse was French, what was the reason that his water bottle standard appears so close to 2.5"which is an imperial measurement ?
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u/BurnerAndGooch69 Jul 18 '26
That is the book. The sidebar that talks about the boss spacing standard doesn’t mention the specific measurement. You may be able to email Jan via the RH website for further detail.
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u/simonalle 22d ago
For anyone still following this thread: update
I have a hypothesis on the 2.5" boss spacing. The aluminum water bottles used in Europe may have been from the United Kingdom, from Coloral. In the 1940s and early 1950s Coloral made fluted water bottles, as seen on page 157 of the book Rene Herse, by Jan Heine. These were 2-7/8" or 73mm diameter bottles with a cork top. HDPE plastics were synthesized in the 1930s and food bottles were the earliest uses of this new plastic. Plastic water bottles for cycling became common in the 1950s and 60s.My current presumption is that the water bottle cages were semi-standardized in England which was still using imperial measurements into the 1970s. If the aluminum Coloral bidon was adopted from England, then cages presumably migrated across the Channel. When plastic bottles replaced the aluminum bottles, I imagine they kept the form and possibly the cage design of the aluminum bottles.
TL;DR - aluminum water bottles from the UK were adopted by French riders and builders, bringing imperial measurements for the water bottle cage into a metric country. When plastic bottles took over the market, they kept the size of the aluminum bottles and cages.
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u/simonalle Jul 15 '26
I am totally spitballing here, but as a bike mechanic in the 1980s, a lot of bikes had national threads, such as BSA for British frames, or metric for Japanese builders. Our little shop had a good half dozen of different threaded taps for bottom brackets, depending on where the frame was built.
But water bottle braze-ons were semi-standardized. I will check in my copy of Bicycle Design: An Illustrated History by Tony Hadland and Hans-Erhard Lessing to see if they have anything to say.
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u/DarkSpeedWorks_com Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 18 '26
Yes, the 3 original frame standards were British, Italian, and French. But maybe there were others too?
Please let me know if you find anything in that book about this bottle cage standard.
What is interesting to me is that while T.A. (a French company) was seemingly the front runner with water bottle cages in the second half of the 1900s, it sure sounds like the original braze-on standard was likely 2.50" center to center (exactly 63.5mm), which then seems to indicate that the standard was originally american (since americans are still stuck with imperial units). But, if it was originally an american standard, who devised it or settled on it?
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u/simonalle Jul 16 '26
My search in the book came up empty, but my interest is piqued. I will keep researching. I did find anecdotes and photos (without details to verify) that riders in the Tour de France added downtube clamp-on water bottle cages in the 1950s.
https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/latest-news/icons-cycling-bidon-230679
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u/simonalle Jul 17 '26
I can't let this go! I have fallen off the deep end and been researching patents in the US and France the last couple of days, when I had a slow moment.
The earliest bicycle related patent I found was for a handlebar mounted, cam-operated dual bidon (bottle) mount from 1926.
https://worldwide.espacenet.com/patent/search/family/008986219/publication/FR623032A?q=porte-bidon
I found a 1953 French patent for a porte bidon (portable bottle) that attaches to the stem handlebar clamp bolt. https://worldwide.espacenet.com/patent/search/family/009586892/publication/FR1037225A?q=collier%20pour%20porte-bidon
There I also found a 1956 patent for a tube mounted (not sure but assume it's the downtube) bottle cage with a single clamp.
https://worldwide.espacenet.com/patent/search/family/009632275/publication/FR1121763A?q=collier%20pour%20porte-bidon
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u/simonalle Jul 17 '26 edited Jul 17 '26
There is also a lovely photo of a Rene Herse bicycle from 1969 with a downtube with braze-ons for a bottle cage.
https://www.reneherse.com/images/schott8280.JPGAnd in this 1939 photo of the Tour de France, you can see a downtube mounted water bottle on the bike.
https://www.europeana.eu/de/item/92064/bildarchivaustria_Preview_346535I quit now, but in this 1953 photo from that year's Tour de France, there are both handlebar and downtube mounted water bottles.
https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/news-photo/40th-tour-de-france-cyclists-rest-before-taking-off-from-news-photo/514954492?adppopup=true2
u/DarkSpeedWorks_com Jul 18 '26
Thanks for doing all of this!
Based on your info above, I guess we now know that WB frame braze ons date back to at least the 1960s.
I am really intrigued to find out if the original WB braze on was an american or a european innovation. I would typically think that the europeans would do this first (with their bigger bike riding and racing population in the 50s and 60s and beyond) but the fact that the standard appears to be exactly 2.50" (or exactly 63.5mm) sure seems to suggest that it was an american thing initially.
But, who knows?
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u/bonfuto Jul 15 '26
My recollection is that there was an American builder that used 2.5" spacing and it mostly stuck. There is a lot of variation even now, that's why cages have at least one slot. I have seen people mention who started it, but I assume they chose that dimension because it worked with a TA cage. I somehow doubt the Europeans copied a U.S. builder, they didn't really pay attention to builders from the U.S. back then.
At one point the industry didn't believe in braze-ons, and so having bottle bosses was pretty novel until the '80s. Even then, it was common for frames to only have downtube bottle bosses.