1991 Beryllium RekTek MTB

Gerard said:
Interesting frame and keen to see how it comes out. Lots of mystery about beryllium, used in loudspeakers, particularly the HF drivers (Yamaha NS1000 were the first in the late 1970s IIRC).
This is shat Ibis have to say on it:

Thanks for that! Great info Gerard. The military also uses it and I understand it is so expensive and difficult to work with, that it is one of the strongest motivations behind reclaiming downed aircraft.
 
tintin40":3gy0yn2k said:
nice find. keep the thread updated with the build progress. Looks a good build in progress

Yes for sure, will do. My pleasure. I've slowly been bolting parts to it to see if anything is wrong. There's no cable stop for the rear canti's for instance.
 
danson67":2qrsaohs said:
There are some vague mentions around of a ReK Tek beryllium prototype for the '93 Interbike, so maybe this is it?

The TT cable stops look to have been machined to fit a larger diameter of tube, so looks very 'prototype', yet the cast lugs would have been a considerable expense. Did RekTek make a bonded frame already, or are the lugs lifted from Trek or such?

Most likely to be one of the the AlBeMet alloys from Brush-Wellman mentioned in the Ibis quote which Gerard posted, which is allegedy fully weldable. Bonding would still be a good option, given the H&S/COSHH risks of the vapour.

It could be Boralyn (Aluminium/Boron Carbide) alloy. The earliest MMCs (French Aerospace) were based on 2014 aluminium, which isn't weldable, so the bonding may have been essential.

If it were a weldable alloy based MMC then it would surely have been a welded frame? RekTek had plenty of experience welding aluminium frames, so a boron carbide metalmatrix (still 95+% aluminium and fully weldable) tube shouldn't have been any trouble, just like Specialized, Univega, Dean, Clark Kent etc. No need to cast lugs and bond it together. Unless Rek Tek already knew about the problems of the metal fibres migrating away from the weld pool causing weaknesses?...

Material properties: https://materion.com/products/metal-mat ... s/albemet#

All the best,

Thanks, Dan, for your input. Very interesting. I'm not sure what material it is, but all I do know is that I have never touched an alloy like this before. It truly is odd to touch and look at. This frame was made in Russia. Where is Brush-Wellman located? You are correct about the cable stop block. It is ment for a different bike...perhaps the ti sandvick frames they were doing? I'm not aware of RekTek doing bonded lugged frames.
 
Re:

Some more pictures
43972108382_08d4e43560_b.jpg


I've moved several times since the early 90's...like twelve times actually. But I went hunting for a headset the other day and I found my RekTek brake boosters from way back when. I love it when the universe does this

43972108162_86f68317c8_b.jpg
 
Re: Re:

BC":1pafc378 said:
sinnerman":1pafc378 said:
Is it made with Beryllium or is it made with Boralyn ...?

The finish looks a lot like Boralyn,i dont know enough but i have owned a Univega bitd, which ever it is, very cool.

I'm not sure, sinnerman? An employee at RekTek came forward on Fb and said it was beryllium and gave me the additional info about the price they paid and where it was made.


Its a great project, and I dont know either, not that it makes much odds does it..? its cool whichever.

BITD my early days, I was given the Univega to ride, My boss at the time made me aware that the Soviets had surplus raw materials and Pacific had bought, and were building bikes using the mmc for different manufacturers like Univega Etc, even though the material was now avaliable at a lower cost they still needed companies to want to use it for flagship models to make it viable.

As I say I dont know enough, but I had no reason to doubt the importer at the time, to me it was a little like a wonder material, it had a really nice touch when picking it up, totally different to anything else and it was light. Obviously as time went on, it did get diluted into lower models, and im guessing the actual tubeset differed when it went from being called Boralyn to borolite etc.

Other manufacturers were obviously using MMC too, but nothing seemed the same as the Boralyn, this may have been because it wasnt painted like a mmc Specialzed for example, I dont know, but certainly the Boralyn name being so close to Beryllium did add a little mystery to it for me, and this mystery was all thanks to the who ha in the press over the cost and difficulties of Beryllium.

I thought it was worth mentioning because the rear gear hanger looks quite generic, this may have been a simple purchase part for the product, but it might indicate the origin of manufacture too, especially as the cable guides look like they weren't for this frame originally.

I dont know enough about Rek Tek, but given they outsourced to Sandvik to fabricate there titanium frames, given the limited users or Boralyn/beryllium it would make more sense to me that a small firm like this wouldn't build this either but rather outsource to a company like Pacific to manufacture for them, much in the same way as many many companies not geared up to build titanium frames and too outsourced to companies like Sandvik.

Just a thought really, it might at least give you another avenue to explore.
 

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