| Jack Hearne
spent his childhood in the village of Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire,
some 25 miles to the west of the City of London . After Army National
Service, Jack started work in his Uncle's village garage in Stoke Poges,
driving a taxi. He was also introduced to cycle repairs, as most garages
after World War II sold bicycles . Jack then
attended evening classes at the London Polytechnic to learn Cycle Frame Building.
His first shop, again in Stoke Poges, was
in a converted barn next-door to one of the village's public houses.
The " forge" for brazing the frame tubes, was outside the shop in a canvas
covered metal framed extension. This also housed at first an electric oven
for stove-enamelling, the painting of finished frames. Later a larger
oven, fuelled by bottled gas, was installed. This was large enough for
tandem frames or several normal size frames.
The frame build started off indoors in the
loft area above the shop. A flat table-top board with frame angles and
sizes etc was used to prepare and cut the tubes to length, and to file
lugs and tube ends prior to setting to the angles
required. The board was also used to pin the tubes before brazing took
place. Jigs were not used by the smaller frame builders at this time. Jack
always did his own paint spraying, transfers and lacquering which meant
many times in and out of the oven. Transfer quality was not so good in the
early days and it often meant another respray had to be done to achieve
the best finish.
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| Jack later had a custom built shop 3 miles
to the south of the village in the town of Slough.
This shop had a large showroom for around 120 cycles, a workshop in the
basement and further work areas at the rear. He built his own "shot blast
room" for removing old paint, and he installed a larger paint spray
unit with air extractors. The unit enabled him to give the frames a finish
second to none.
During the 1960s many smaller frame builder shops
sponsored riders for road racing. Then they were called "Independents" or
Semi Pros", and usually involved just one rider.
Bigger Shops may have had 3 or 4 riders, with team names such as "Wally
Green Cycles", "Condor-Mackeson", "Quinn-Everyman", " Ryall-Raxar" and "
Witcombe's". They would be seen racing along with the
bigger teams of "Viking Cycles", " Falcon Cycles" " Dawes", "Raleigh" and
others.
Jack was a race mechanic to the England Team on several
occasions with the Tour of Britain. The team leader was Bill Bradley, a
winner. Jack was awarded one of the yellow jerseys for his work on the
team. He also went with a team to the Tour of Sweden and the European Tour
of Youth. Jack's village, Stoke Poges, produced a future champion cyclist.
He was Eddie Adkins, son of the village policemen, who went on to win the
National 25 Mile Championships of 1977, 1978 and 1979. Eddie was riding a
Jack Hearne frame for many years of his racing career, and Jack was very
proud of Eddie's numerous race wins.
I offer my sincerest thanks to Jack for teaching me so
much over the past 45 years, not least for giving me my nick-name of "
Jaffa "
Thanks,
Geoff ( Jaffa) Orange
Former Secretary of Chiltern Road Club.
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Jack and
Jaffa at Jack's 65th Birthday |
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Presenting the Cup
For overall win of " Stokes Crits" to
Brian Tadman around 1968 |
