Chris Blandford ponders the significance of Reynolds, the legendary manufacturer behind some of the most iconic bicycle tubesets in history. From its invention of butted tubing in the 1890s to its steady evolution into modern materials and techniques, Reynolds has never stopped crafting the structural foundation of the bikes that move us. What follows is a first-hand look inside the factory, the people who keep it humming, and the future they’re building one tube at a time…
I stood there watching Nad and tried to do the math.
Three butted tubes per frame. Four machines. One tube per machine. Thirty seconds per tube. Eight hours per day, five days per week…
…for 127 years.
How many tubes? How many frames? How many bikes? How many miles? Just think of all the miles.
How many races? How many tours, commutes, trails, grocery runs, school drop-offs, and neighborhood joy rides? Just imagine all the joy rides.
How many pedal strokes?
How much time?
This is Reynolds
The Reynolds factory lies at the end of an unmarked, dead-end drive in suburban Birmingham. The crumbling road serves Reynolds and just a few industrial warehouses. All around, new townhomes have nearly barricaded the little strip of businesses; they’re hardly visible from any of the main roads running nearby.
Mathilda and I arrived a few minutes late on an unusually warm Wednesday morning in June. Despite the best guesses of Google Maps and our local Uber driver, we’d had to stop to ask directions and make a phone call to Keith Noronha, Reynolds’ owner. When we finally found the place, Keith waved aside our tardiness, “Not to worry, happens every time.”
Like most bicyclists, I’m aware of the history. I know the Reynolds lore: the racing heritage and those famed Reynolds 531 tubeset decals. Reynolds is the original inventor of internally butted bicycle tubing. Alfred Reynolds and his company invented the process by which metal tubing is “butted” well over a century ago. An internally butted tube is one where the ends of the tube are thicker than its middle, but its outer diameter remains constant. Nearly every steel bike in existence – and most metal bikes in general – are made with butted tubing. The thicker butts provide structural integrity where the tubes are joined together. The thinner center section eliminates unnecessary weight and adds to a bike’s ride quality.
Most bicycle riders – and for that matter, most bicycle framebuilders – take butted tubing for granted. It’s been around for so long that it’s easy to forget how magical it really is. I’ve been building bicycle frames for a long time, but if you asked me to describe how a mandrel butted tube is actually made, I’d be at a loss. Thicker on the ends, thinner in the middle, with a consistent outer diameter. And no cutting tools allowed. Think about that. That’s magic.
Keith welcomed my daughter and me into the Reynolds’ office. We were greeted cheerfully by his small team, led by Emma Malone (the person I’ve been bugging via email the most these past few months). Emma has been with Reynolds her entire working life, since the early 1990s. At one point, she, her father, and one of her sons all worked at the factory concurrently. While not so in ownership, in practice, Reynolds is very much a family business, and, I noticed, a close-knit one at that. The entirety of the managerial team shares a single, open room – six desks squeezed together with just enough space for everyone to wiggle past each other on their way to and from the factory floor. In a funny way, this familial arrangement immediately grounded my understanding of the place.
All right, got it. This is Reynolds.
Keith and Jim McCafferty, a new investor in the company, showed us to the conference/storage/lunch room (the only other office space at the factory). Anticipating our arrival, Jim had pulled some historical documents for us to see – old photos of employees, drawings of the original factory, and brochures from different eras. Among the items was a handwritten book of board meeting minutes. Jim recently discovered the book at the bottom of an old storage box, sitting on one of Reynolds’ numerous, dusty shelves. The pages inside were dated “99”, as in 1899. The first entry, dated March of that year, logs a meeting to discuss the issuing of a new patent for the company. And tucked into that book (the one that was just lying at the bottom of an old cardboard box) was a copy of the original patent issuance letter itself.
I took hold of the loose piece of paper with its torn edges, greasy fingerprints, and fading type, and couldn’t help but smile.
Firsthand Framebuilding
Keith, Jim, I, and Tom Cleverly, Reynolds’ chief engineer, chatted for a few minutes. My upstart framebuilding supply company, Firsthand, has recently signed an exclusive distribution deal with Reynolds for North America. This was my first visit to the factory, and I’d let my daughter tag along. While the nine-year-old entertained herself, the four of us discussed Reynolds’ current business. I outlined our plans for Firsthand and shared some ideas on how we could generate renewed enthusiasm for Reynolds among framebuilders in the US and Canada. We discussed our current projects, and I gained a deeper understanding of the business’s history and what makes Reynolds’ products unique.
“Booooring buuuusiness stuff,” Mathilda would later note. Well, I can’t completely disagree… The real reason I wanted to visit, of course, was to see the factory.
The Reynolds factory floor is quite something. There’s a very real humanity within that 15,000 square feet in Birmingham. That might sound abstract, but that’s the only way to describe it. Walking through the shop, that’s the word that came to mind. There’s a certain tactile quality – a humanness – at Reynolds, both indescribable and undeniable. The smell of warm steel – slightly acrid but familiar – hangs permanently in the air. Thick layers of grease cling to many of the shop’s surfaces, having accumulated over decades of use. The cast-iron machines look nearly sedimentary, as if they’ve been molded to their current footprints. It’s almost as if Reynolds has been poured into place over the last century. Reynolds’ shop has permanence. It is a spot overflowing with character, impossible to imitate.
Messy, yet tidy. Flawed, but well-maintained. Cluttered, but organized. Manual, but super efficient. Perfectly imperfect.
Reynolds just feels human. Real. Amid the oddity and uncertainty of 2025, visiting a place like Reynolds is refreshing. Grounding. Businesses like this are completely unprecious, but incredibly valuable.
Dave Merrifield, Reynold’s production manager, gave me the shop tour. We worked our way through the process, starting at raw material receiving and moving through to finishing, quality control, and shipping. The factory floor is small. From a single vantage point, one can see nearly all of the operations being performed simultaneously.
Despite its compactness (or perhaps because of it), the factory is super efficient. While watching the machinists perform their tasks, I noted how practical all of their movements were. Every tool had a natural home, and every movement had a purpose. In modern manufacturing, “time and motion” studies are imparted by managers; at Reynolds, they’re merely day-to-day evolutions. Like Emma, many of the machine operators at Reynolds are second or third-generation employees, working with the same tools and machines that their parents and grandparents used before them. Efficiency (and proficiency) is in their blood. Dave shared with me that, even after eight years as Reynolds’ production manager, some of the machines and operations remain a mystery to him. The experts of the process are those on the floor itself, those who have used and maintained these tools for generations.
Of particular interest, of course, were the butting machines themselves. Dave introduced me to Nadeem, who operates one of the two lines of butting machines. Reynolds purchases high-quality raw material from a variety of sources worldwide. During our visit, Nad was working with some German-made, high-manganese alloy steel tubing for a run of 853-series down tubes. After the raw material is drawn down to a workable diameter and wall thickness, it is cut to length and wheeled over to Nadeem. Nad applies a special lubricant, and the first of two machines shoves a hardened, butted mandrel into the tube. Everything is cold-worked at Reynolds, but the amount of force required to perform the operations generates enough heat that the tubes steam and smoke upon exiting the first machine. After the mandrel is inserted, it must then be extracted. Nad places the tube on a second machine that spins it in such a way as to slightly “inflate” it (“…like sails on a sailboat,” Dave explains), just enough to allow the mandrel to slip back out again. Ultimately, each tube is produced to a precise diameter, with an exact butt profile, and without any adverse effects on its physical properties.
The whole scene is pure, mechanical wizardry. I watched and photographed Nadeem for several minutes, and I still don’t really understand the mechanics of what I was viewing. But as I stood there, I gained a true appreciation for the seemingly effortless expertise of this little company–127 years of daily production, innovation, and cycling influence. Despite its quirks, Reynolds really is impressive.
How many miles? How much sweat?
How many crashes? How many repairs?
How many first rides? How many final rides?
How much joy has come out of this little factory over the years?
The numbers are… impossible. But Reynolds’ contribution to cycling and to our collective happiness as riders is immense, without a doubt. So many bicycle brands have come and gone, so many trends have seen their days fade, but through it all, Reynolds has been there, cranking out tubes from which to build bikes.
So what comes next?
The Future of Tubing
After lunch, I chatted again with Keith and Jim. They’re both very conscious of the appeal that Reynolds’ history and tradition have to cyclists of a certain age. But they’re also insistent that Reynolds is more than a legacy brand. They are focused on leading the company forward, leaning on innovation and modern technology to usher in a new era for the company. They respect their history, of course, but they’re fully invested in the brand’s future.
Reynolds will always be an industry leader in butted steel and titanium tubing. That’s their bread and butter, and remains so. Under Keith’s leadership, however, they continue to diversify. They’ve invested heavily in stainless steel and titanium 3D printing, and now produce small printed parts to complement their tubes. They’re working with several brands (both directly and through us at Firsthand) to create new tubes for modern frame designs in both steel and ti. They have agreements in place with Mahle, an e-bike motor manufacturer, to produce tubes and parts specifically designed for e-bike fabrication. And finally, under Jim’s direction, they’re experimenting with new product lines for high-end aircraft and motorcycle design. Reynolds is determined to remain around for another 100 years, right there in suburban Birmingham, and they’re taking the steps to ensure that they will.
Seeing that factory was captivating, but chatting with the team about the future of Reynolds was inspiring.
Before departing, I asked Keith what he’s been most proud of during his time with Reynolds. He mentioned the word “stewardship,” noting that for the past 25 years he has felt personally responsible not just for the day-to-day operations of the business, but also for the legacy of the brand, its people, the employees, and their loyal customers. “Owning” a brand like Reynolds isn’t about bottom lines; it’s about leading a family forward. I could tell that it hasn’t always been easy for Keith, but that it has been worth it. He and Jim are most proud to be mere stewards of something larger than themselves. Pretty admirable.
After saying our goodbyes, Mathilda and I called an Uber to take us back to the Birmingham train station. Despite the hot afternoon sun, I decided that we should walk out to the main road so that the driver would actually be able to find us. As we waited on the corner, a delivery truck turned in on its way to the factory. The truck driver made his way down that crumbling road as if he’d made the trip a thousand times before. He probably had. His daily Reynolds pickup, no doubt.
More tubes out the door, headed to framebuilders around the world – more frames to come.
More bikes.
Just think of all the bikes.