René Herse cranks remain unsurpassed in their efficiency. The minimalist design with three arms makes this one of the lightest cranks ever made, yet the chainrings are well-supported, and standard chainring bolts are used. We’ve updated René Herse’s classic design by curving the arms slightly. This provides additional heel clearance and allows use of a shorter bottom bracket spindle. We forge the arms out of the strongest aluminum, and we machine the chainrings out of ultra-hard 7000-series aluminum for optimum wear resistance. We custom-make our bolts. Producing such a minimalist design requires very tight tolerances and superior quality. That is why we have a dedicated engineer supervising the production at our suppliers.
Thanks to our net-shape forging process (which has a dedicated forging die for each crank length), René Herse cranks are the only classic cranks that pass the most stringent EN ‘Racing Bike’ standard for fatigue resistance. They have proven themselves over tens of thousands of miles of hard riding.