Front	Rear	Left	Right	Open for Rigging

Technical Details

I acquired this rack from Neil Relph in 2022. He purchased it from Glacier Sport in Preston, Lancashire in the early 1980s, maybe even 1980.

My Glacier Sport rack is 261 mm. tall, 64 mm. wide, 23 mm. thick, and weighs 503 g. The frame is made from 9.6 mm. stainless steel bent into shape, with an internal width of 30 mm. The eye is a 28 mm. tall, 44 mm. wide, 16 mm. thick aluminum block with a 17 mm. hole that is threaded and pinned to the rod. There are 6 brake bars. The bars are 19 mm. in diameter and 64 mm. long. Allowing 45 mm. for the rope leaves 45 mm. for spreading the bars.

Each of the brake bars has "LEWIS stamped on the closed end.

Comments

These are obviously Keith Lewis’ bars, but there are no markings on the frame. Is this a Lewis Rack, or did someone else make it? The eye is unusual; the only other racks that I have with treaded eyes are early Howell-N-Mann racks from 1993. I have a known Lewis rack with a traditional coiled eye, so I am not confident that this rack frame was made by Keith Lewis. For now at least, I'm calling it a Glacier Sport rack after the store that sold it.

The small angle between the eye block and the plane of the frame is easily explained. When the block was cross-drilled for the pin, the open end of the frame would have lain flat on the drill press table.