Swords And Ploughshares From Reynolds

Today is Veterans' Day here in the USA.   In other countries, today is Armistice Day.  

While I think veterans, especially those who are disabled, should never want for anything, I think this day--or Memorial Day--should not be a day to celebrate war with chest-thumping displays of nationalistic grandiosity.  (Nor should it be simply another orgy of shopping, as too many other "holidays" have become.)  Rather, I think such days should be occasions to remember who and what we've lost in wars, and ways we can prevent it.

That said, I'm going to talk about the contribution one of the most respected companies in cycling made to a war effort.

I wrote about said company in yesterday's blog post.  Specifically, I wrote about a frame tube set it produced for a few years--and one it made for decades.

That company, Reynolds, still makes some of the most esteemed tubing, which is used by some of the world's best bicycle builders.  My post focused on "708", which it made for a few years and was a descendant of its most iconic product:  531 tubing, which won 24 out of 25 Tours de France after World War II and was used to build high-quality bikes for just about every type of riding and rider for half a century.


As much as it pains me to say this, Reynolds 531 tubing, like many other advances in technology, resulted from military research and development. The company said as much.

Reynolds began manufacturing nails in Birmingham, England in 1841. It thrived in this business but its leaders saw the potential in bicycle fitments, especially after James Starley's "safety" bicycle (with two equally-sized wheels) helped to popularize cycling in the 1880s.  

Its reputation was burnished during the cycling boom of the 1890s, when Reynolds was one of the first companies to make seamless tubing and, not long after, patented the first butted tubing.  The latter development, of course, revolutionized bicycle design because making the ends of the tubes--where most of the stress concentrated--thicker, the walls could be made thinner toward the middle of the tube.  This resulted in frames that were lighter and more resilient than ones that had been made before.  To this day, high-quality frames made from steel, aluminum or titanium have butted tubes.


Reynolds double-butted tubing was such an advancement over other steel tubing available at the time that during World War I, the company was called upon to equip the armed forces.   Its first contracts were for military bicycles and motorcycles, but by 1916, Reynolds tubing was being used for aircraft used in the war.

Aeronautical engineering is, almost by definition, a quest for making things as light and strong as possible.  Those early airplanes had such thin wings and shells because, given the materials of the time, they had to be constructed that way in order for them to be light enough to loft into the air.  Engineers and designers soon realized that they couldn't make those parts thinner without running the risk that they would break apart at the slightest crosswind or impact.  So, the emphasis shifted toward making materials stronger.

That is how Reynolds, and other companies, began to experiment with alloys of steel.   It was known that adding certain elements to the metal strengthened it, which meant that less could be used to achieve the same strength.  By the 1930s, Reynolds upon a particularly good combination consisting of maganese, molybdenum and other elements, in a ratio of approximately five to three to one.  Now you know why it's called Reynolds 531.

During World War II, production of frame tubes was suspended, as Reynolds was once again called upon to make aircraft parts.  After the war ended, 531 production resumed and the "miracle metal" was used in aircraft components, race car chasis and, most famously, bicycles.

Perhaps I am being overly pessimistic in highlighting the fact that Reynolds' technologies had their root in war efforts.  I guess I could see it as an example of "beating swords into ploughshares." That makes it easier to enjoy the ride of my Mercians! 

What Happened To 708?

How can you tell the best bikes from the rest?

For about half a century, the answer was simple:  Look for Reynolds 531 stickers on the frame and fork.  Just about everyone who built frames by hand in the English-speaking world used it. So did the top bikes from the leading manufacturers in those countries, as well as in Continental Europe and Japan.  Even some Cinellis were made from "five-three-one" in the main triangle (and Columbus SP forks and stays) until the mid-1960s.

The reason for this was simple:   Reynolds 531 offered, by far, the best weight-to-strength ratio of any bicycle building material available. Its strength, said to be the result of its composition (made with maganese and molybdenum) allowed it to be drawn paper-thin midway through the length of the tube. That made significantly lighter bikes possible, and the fact that it was "butted" at the ends and seamless meant that it didn't compromise strength.  While other companies made seamless double-butted tubing (which Reynolds first developed), none seemed to achieve quite the balance of responsiveness and comfort of Reynolds 531. Also, it was offered in a dizzying array of configurations to suit just about every kind of rider and riding.

While nearly all of the British builders and manufacturers, and some in France, continued to build mainly or exclusively with Reynolds 531, some in other European countries, as well as the US, shifted to Columbus tubing--or offered bikes made from each brand.  While some claimed that Columbus made for a "stiffer" bike, I think that perception came from the fact it was used mainly to build criterium and track frames, which were the mainstays of high-end Italian bike production.  In contrast, Reynolds 531 was used on a wider variety of bikes, including the touring, audax and randonneuring machines made mainly by British and French builders, but far less often by their Italian counterparts.

In part to compete with Columbus and other tubing companies, and in part as a response to changes in bike-building techniques, Reynolds created new tubing sets, starting with their "753", introduced in 1975.  (See Retrogrouch's excellent article about it.)  Other tube sets followed.  Some, such as the 631 (said to be the successor of 531) and 853, have become mainstays (pun intended) of the bike world.  Others, like the 501, a seamed chrome-molybdenum tubing, were widely used for a number of years on mid- to upper-mid level bikes, including some from Peugeot, Motobecane and Trek as well as British makers like Raleigh and Dawes.  

Then there were other Reynolds products that seemed to come and go pretty quickly.  One example is their "708".

  

I could find very little information about it.  Apparently, it was made for a few years during the 1980s, and it seems not to have been used much, if at all, outside of England.  I could find no reference to it in any American frame builder's or bike manufacturer's literature of that period, and I saw references to just two French bikes--one from Peugeot, the other from Motobecane.  Neither of them, nor any of the British models made from 708, seems to have been exported to the US.  

This tubing differed from others made by Reynolds, as well as other high-quality tube sets from Columbus, Tange, Ishiwata and Vitus, in that it wasn't internally butted at the ends.  Instead, the tubes were made with eight internal ribs running lengthwise inside the tubes, rather like the rifling in a gun barrel. (I know, that's not the most politically-correct analogy to use, especially after the latest election, but it will be useful later.) This was supposed to increase strength and lateral stiffness over butted or straight-gauge tubes.  Reynolds intended for it to be used on touring and other heavy-use bikes,  and the few bikes made from it were of those types.  

Raleigh Randonneur, a bike made from Reynolds 708 tubing. From Retrobike UK.

The few testimonies I've found about bikes made from Reynolds 708 were positive. So why did it come and go as quickly as it did?  One the reasons was brand loyalty--or, more specifically, a product loyalty.  At that time, it seemed, dyed-in-the-wool 531 riders didn't want to try anything else, whether or not it came from Reynolds.  And those who were inclined to try something new were switching over to Columbus or the then-new aluminum bikes.

I can think of one other possible reason why, not only did so few people buy bikes made from 708, but why, apparently, so few (comparatively, anyway) bikes were made from it.  A butted frame tube has the same thickness through the circumference of the tube.  This means that whether the builder or manufacturer brazes or welds the frame tubes together, and whether or not lugs are used, a consistent level of heat can be maintained around the circumference. In contrast, ribbed frame tubes have thick and thin sections, which makes it more difficult to maintain consistent heat levels.  An area that is heated more loses more strength that is heated less.  Thus, I imagine that it would be more difficult to make a strong joint with ribbed than with butted tubes.

Then again, I didn't see any references to collapses or other failures of 708 frames.  That may be a result of the relatively small number that were produced, or of that those few tended to be relatively high-level bikes which were made by more skilled hands than mass-market bikes.

Whether or not 708 had the possible problems I mentioned, it didn't seem to influence bike-making very much.  The only other internally-ribbed frame tubes of which I'm aware were Columbus SLX and the tubing that Miyata made for some of their own bikes. Both were manufactured around the same time as 708 was produced.  I don't know whether either was inspired by 708.  Miyata, though, may have had the idea stored in their institutional memory, if you will:  Before they started making bikes, they made rifles.

It's Not My Fault, I Think

Confession:  For a brief time in my life, I worked in market research.  

In those days, we didn't have what are now called "social media".  And only the computer geeks were using the computer networks that would later help to form the basis of the Internet.

So we did our work with paper and telephone surveys. The former were mailed or given to people, while the latter--then as now--reached people while they were eating dinner, or at some equally inconvenient time.

The money was decent.  So why did I leave it?  No, I didn't have any sort of existential crisis or moral pangs.  And I didn't get bored:  After all, in what other kind of work can you learn such interesting and useful facts as people's consumption habits?  At the time, interestingly, people in Puerto Rico bought more Cheez-Whiz and Hawaiians purchased more Spam per capita than anyone else in America.  And the average New Yorker--surprise, surprise--bought more Wonder bread than anyone else.

Egad!  Had I known that such data would be stuck in my cranium all of these years later, I would have quit even sooner than I did.  But I left market research, in part because I went and did other things that, I thought, were closer to my own talents (such as they are) and passions. The biggest reason, however, for moving on to other things was that I realized my MR job was the most profound waste of time in my life.  I still feel that way about it.

On that job, I learned that simply asking people questions wasn't the surest, best way to get accurate, much less truthful, information about people.  We all know that there are those loves, those passions, that dare not speak their names.  To this day, I don't know what led me--or anyone else with whom I worked--to believe that people would always tell us what they wanted, liked or felt.  Sometimes they wouldn't.  Sometimes they couldn't.

I found myself thinking about my MR experience after I heard the election results and the disbelief of the pollsters and pundits.  Surely, they told us, Trump hadn't a chance:  He was too vulgar, too sexist, too fill-in-the-blank.  He had no government experience; running a company or hosting a reality TV show isn't like presiding over a country.  As if people were thinking in such terms!

Their surveys and algorithms (Was that the theme music for a certain campaign in 2000?)  couldn't detect something I've noticed while riding my bike.  

From Regated

I wish I'd photographed the lines of "Trump" signs posted on front lawns along the Connecticut, Westchester and New Jersey streets I rode last Friday and Saturday.  Some of them stood next to signs calling for Hillary's incarceration.  

Through the past spring and summer, such signs sprouted, like fungi after a rainstorm, with increasing and alarming frequency, along my bike routes on Long Island and even in parts of this city, the bluest of the blue.   

Of course, being on the road, I saw plenty of "Trump/ Pence--Make America Great Again" bumper stickers.   And, let me tell you, they weren't all on pickup trucks:  I even saw one on a Prius, of all cars!   

But what if I'd presented some pollster or talking head with photos of Trump signs and bumper stickers, or other evidence of Trumpmania I observed?  Would they have paid any attention to me?  Somehow, I think they wouldn't have, any more than the market researcher I was would have listened to someone who actually spent time in clubs, dance halls and the like in order to determine what music people were listening to.  Or the store manager who can tell you what is selling and what isn't.  

So, even though I didn't take those photos or otherwise record the evidence of Trumpophilia I saw from my saddle, I guess I'm not responsible, after all, for his election.  Or so I'd like to believe.