Stelbel

After World War II, Stelio Belletti joined his father, Antenore, in his workshop in via Giovanni Antonio Amadeo, in the Ortica district of Milan. The mechanical workshop specialized in the construction of frames and other metal tubing structures. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Belletti Workshop collaborated significantly with important Aeronaticaul and motorcycle companies in Italy. It was one of the first companies in Italy to own and operate a TIG welding machine.

Stelio Belletti has always been a huge cycling fan and as a boy was part of local amateur cycling teams. Since the early 1970s, his experience as a welder fabricating motorcycle frames and aircraft fuselages pushed him to begin experimenting with the production of bicycle frames, combining steel tubing with TIG welding which at the time was a new technique in the bicycle industry. Encouraged by his father and by the results he had obtained, in the spring of 1973 he decided to found the Stelbel brand, allowing him to distinguish the production of racing bicycle frames from the other activities carried out in the family workshop. The frames were produced in Via Alessandro Manzoni, 1 in Lucino, a fraction of Rodano in the province of Milan.

photo attached to the original documentation of the first Stelbel patent – Modello Integrale

Stelio Belletti in 1979

Using the knowledge he had acquired as a mechanic, builder and welder, coupled with his experiences as a bicycle racer, Belletti began to work on the production of a frame model that would encompass all the technological advances he had witnessed in his time. The racing frame model he created was patented in 1975 and called the "Integrale" model. The title on the patent states: Bicycle frame designed for competition with at least a portion of the tubes directly joined together through a welding process.

Source: Central Patent Office – Patent N. 166907

The patent description illustrates in detail how the steel tubing is joined together to create a frame through a TIG welding process that uses a non-consumable tungsten electrode to produce the weld, which is protected during the welding process by an inert shielding gas (Argon).

In August 1975, the UCI World Road Championships were held in Mettet and Yvoir, Belgium. For the Championships, the Polish national cycling team was provided with Stelbel frames built specially for the event. It was the debut of Stelio Belletti’s product in an international competition. Belletti made 6 frames (4 official frames plus 2 reserve frames) for the team time trial race and another six frames for the men's road race. The Polish team was made up by racers Tadeusz Mytnik, Mieczyslaw Nowicki, Ryszard Szurkowski and Stanisław Szozda who, racing on Stelbel frames, won the gold medal for the team time trial race.

Encouraged by the positive results of his frames, Stelio Belletti completely renounced all other commitments and began to focus solely on building racing bicycle frames. During the late 1970s, Stelbel frames continued to evolve, becoming increasingly refined and sophisticated, both in terms of technique and aesthetics. In particular, Belletti developed his concept of a fork crown produced in-house, which went on to become a hallmark of Stelbel frames. The development of the fork crown involved a distinctive production process and did not use any prefabricated components. The construction of the first Strada model dates back to 1979, and saw the end of the Integrale model.

"The “Punta dell’Est” model on display at the Stelbel booth at the “Fiera del Ciclo di Milano” in 1985

Stelbel Tandem

In the 1980s, as the demand for Stelbel products continued to grow, new models were added to the catalogue and the company hired its first employees. Stelbel began to focus on building time trial frames that featured aerodynamic solutions and were aesthetically pleasing. These years saw the production of the Dynamic frame model (with aerodynamic characteristics) and an experimental model called the Punta dell’Est, which had an atypical shape for a frame at the time. The Punta dell'Est model was the main attraction at the Stelbel booth during the "Fiera del Ciclo di Milano" in 1985. Emblazoned above the booth was the slogan: "Stelbel" – Argon T.I.G. lugless welded frames. Over the course of the 1980s, the internally produced fork crown underwent several modifications and improvements, but it remains one of the most distinctive features of the Stelbel brand. The first experiments with stainless steel frames date back to 1983-1984. The diameter and thickness of the tubes available on the market were not appropriate for constructing bicycle frames and consequently were custom ordered from a steel mill in the province of Milan. Since 1983, the company adopted a serial numbering system for their frames. Five consecutive numbers were punched into the underside of the bottom bracket, where the first two numbers indicate the year of production. The serial number on the frame should not be confused with the frame dimensions, which were also punched into the underside of the bottom bracket as early on as the mid-1970s.

The evolution of Stelbel frames continued unabated until 1990, arriving at the production of aluminum frames and the first mountain bikes in Italy. That year, due to problems of a private nature, Stelio Belletti was forced to close his doors with very little notice.

In September 2013 talks were held to take Stelbel frames in production again. Thanks to a collaboration between Cicli Corsa and Stelio Belletti, a new range of Stelbel frames is available.