Back when we started building our first bikes in the late 70’s, steel was the only way to go. Fast forward 35 years and steel is no longer the industry’s dominant frame material, but we still love to work with it and ride it. Why? Hit a baseball with a wooden bat then with an aluminum bat and you’ll know why. You want your frame material to soak up streets and trails, not beat you with them. Not to mention the stuff is durable, can handle nicks and dents and gouges without cause for alarm, and is easily repairable. We like the look of those straight, skinny tubes, too.

Reynolds pioneered the techniques of making butted tubing around the turn of the century, and their 531 manganese-molybdenum tubing was the standard of excellence for many decades. In 1995, Reynolds introduced 853 (and a non-heat-treated version, 631, two years later); the world’s first commercial air-hardening steel for bicycle frames and Jamis was one of the first brands to use it in 1997. Welding steel often results in a 40% strength loss, requiring thick tubing walls as an offset. Not so with 853 and 631. This material actually gets stronger at the weld zones, allowing Reynolds to draw the tubing thinner for a lighter, stronger frame.

Though the high performance and buttery-smooth ride qualities of Reynolds 853 and 631 usually grab all the headlines, our frame building is equally over the top. All tubing is cleaned before being cut, jigged and welded. All tubing cuts are de-burred and buffed before welding. We use heat sinks in the head and seat tubes to control distortion. And our low-angle welding tracks form precisely arced, low-profile TIG beads while dispersing welding heat more widely, yielding a frame that requires less post-welding alignment. Add investment cast or water-jet cut dropouts for great looks and extra strength and you’ve got a labor of love that rides like a dream.

All our frames and forks are tested continually to meet or exceed (in some cases, well exceed) EN standards 14764, 14765, 14766 and 14781 as well as the new ISO 4210 standards. We conduct these tests at our frame manufacturing facilities, but we also use EN accredited testing laboratories such as Intertek and SGS to verify the results of our own tests. If these tests aren’t telling us everything we want to know about our bikes, we increase the loads and cycles, or we determine another way to test. Where current hydraulic testing machines, jigs and hardware aren’t up to the task of emulating some of the forces and impacts our bikes might be subject to, we’ve designed our own.

We relentlessly cycle test for fatigue from pedaling and torsional forces on every single frame size, with deflection tests for stiffness at every point of the frame. Brutal impact tests with massive weights dropped on fixed frames or forks are performed. Then reversed, with weights attached to the frame, the frame hoisted to a given height depending upon product type, then released.

This destructive testing is enormously instructive and important. And it is in continual process. But it’s our ongoing non-destructive testing of frames and forks fresh off the factory floor that’s just as vital.

For our carbon fiber frames, EVERY frame is weighed to make sure it’s neither resin rich nor resin deficient. We also measure the stiffness of each frame in 6 critical areas as a check on lay-up production. Each deflection test must fall within 5% of the standards our machine and field-testing have established. This weighing and stiffness deflection testing guarantees every single frame we produce meets all Jamis manufacturing protocol and will

deliver the ride qualities we defined and demand.