ABOUT TRUE TEMPER TUBING

True Temper Sports has a well deserved world-wide reputation for making great golf club shafts. True Temper golf shafts have many of the same requirements as a good bicycle frame tube: high strength, light weight, precision manufacture. True Temper has the technical expertise and decades of experience to take full advantage of steel's potential.

Henry James Bicycles became True Temper's first specialty bicycle tubing distributor fifteen years ago. We have been very happy with our association of the years as True Temper has developed its new products and firmly established the brand in the bicycle industry. True Temper has long recognized the importance of builders and buyers of handcrafted and custom bicycles. For this reason, True Temper supplies Henry James Bicycles with individual tubes, not just complete frame tube kits with no options. This allows your Custom Builder to specify each and every tube as they design your custom frame.

All True Temper bicycle tubing is made in the United States. True Temper makes regular and oversize steel tubing for road, track, and mountain bike frames. It is of the highest quality.

True Temper's newest steel tubing is the S3 Super Strength Steel Series. This alloy makes possible top tubes and down tubes having end butts of a weight shaving 0.5mm and center sections of 0.4mm. This alloy with its special heat treatment is used to create the S3 Super Strength Steel tube set. This makes a compact style (sloping top tube) frame that weighs only 2.85 pounds (1295 grams) for riders who want the lightest weight possible.

True Temper's premium steel tubing is the OX PLATINUM Series. The high strength of the PLATINUM alloy make possible top tubes and down tubes have end butts of 0.7mm and center sections of 0.4mm to minimize weight. In recognition of the needs of Custom Frame Builders and their customers, each main triangle tube comes in a range of wall thicknesses and butt lengths so builders can fine tune the frame's stiffness to their customer's needs.

True Temper created the PLATINUM tubing by taking an aerospace grade of air hardening steel and modifying it to enhance its properties for light weight bicycle frames. The tensile strength exceeds 195,000 psi.

Air Hardening OX PLATINUM Series - 195,000 psi ultimate tensile strength (215,000 psi where air hardened)

VERUS and VERUS HT: True Temper's 4130 Chrome-Moly Steel Tubing

True Temper has decades of experience in working with 4130 chrome-moly steel for its golf shafts, industrial, and military tube products. Chrome-moly steels are the work horses of industry world-wide, because of the excellent combination of strength, ductility, workability, and reliability.

With all the hype about high strength, what often gets lost is the fact that bicycles are built primarily for optimum rigidity appropriate to the intended use. When steel is used, if the frame is rigid enough, it is usually strong enough. Thus True Temper's VERUS and VERUS HT 4130 alloys are excellent choices for frame materials. Also, with any material, there is a trade-off. As strength goes up, ductility usually decreases. The lower strength steels fail in bending, not by brittle fracture.

True Temper's expertise has led to the development of two grades of VERUS 4130 steel bicycle tubing:

4130 Special Heat Treat - VERUS HT Series - 150,000 and 175,000 psi tensile strengths

4130 Stress Relieved - VERUS Series - 110,000 psi tensile strength