No shortcuts is our motto, and when constructing our carbon fiber bikes, it is about producing the best bike possible in an effective process that takes days of precise craftsmanship. As the first to build a USA-made, production ready full-suspension carbon fiber mountain bike, Alchemy has purified our process with decades of experience and in-house production by our master bike builders. To do this, we build our carbon fiber frames using a couple different methods, including the monocoque method (found on our Arktos mountain bikes) and the tube-to-tube method (which is the basis for our road bikes). Generally speaking, the road bike industry leans more heavily on the monocoque method because of its construction efficiency, but for the purposes of this post, we are going to explore the tube-to-tube method of our road bikes. Although generally a bit more labor-intensive, if you’re looking for a superior road bike, here’s a few reasons why the tube-to-tube method might be the right choice for your ride:

• The tube-to-tube construction process does not use any epoxies to structurally hold the frame together. By using only carbon fiber to bond together the various junctions, there are no innate stress points in a tube-to-tube frame – equipping you for a better, and safer, ride all around.
• Tube-to-tube promises an overall smooth ride quality because of the customization of the carbon fiber layup and structural soundness of a tube-to-tube frame. Our proprietary carbon fiber layup schedules help us ensure that each individual strand of carbon is placed in a certain direction for every individual piece of the frame.
• The inside of a tube-to-tube frame is a closed chamber, providing strength and sturdiness. This ensures that there is no hollow or dead feel as you ride.

When the bike is fully constructed, we want to tout the carbon fiber and all overwraps as “badges of honor,” rather than covering the junctions with bondos and hiding everything with paint. We simply use a clear coat and sand that until the junctions and frame are as smooth as possible. The Overall Benefit To each their own, we say, and at the end of the day different methods can produce stellar bicycles. As a company, we believe the overall benefit with tube-to-tube is the advantage we have internally by controlling our own layups and production versus having someone else make our frames with the same materials everyone else is using. By keeping production in the US (in our Denver studio, to be specific), we have total control of our layup schedules and can better manage day-to-day production. Want to learn more about the tube-to-tube process or carbon fiber road bikes? Click here