Japanese steel

Cherubim is one of the most lusted after names in steel. Cyclist met up with its heir, Shin-ichi Konno, to see his latest creation

t might not be possible to find a finer steel bike than a Cherubim. Ask around the handbuilt crowd, study the history and, most importantly, look at the bikes – you just can’t fault the craftsmanship.

In recent times Cherubim has won seven awards in nine years at the North American Handmade Bicycle Show and seven consecutive awards at the Tokyo Handmade Bicycle Fair. It supplied a pioneering Japanese race team with bikes for the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, and for decades has produced the very best JKA keirin bikes raced by, among others, the legendary Yuichiro Kamiyama – 1990s keirin’s answer to Mark Cavendish. The JKA is Japanese keirin’s governing body and it outlaws sponsorship, so if your bike is being raced it means the rider bought it.

The Konno family also just happens to be framebuilding royalty. ‘My father, Hitoshi Konno, started the business in 1965 [then called Cyclone] and taught me to braze when I was a junior,’ says Cherubim’s current custodian, Shin-ichi Konno. ‘His brothers worked with him, and they went on to set up their own companies, 3Rensho and Miyuki.’

They might not be household names today, but for any serious collector or racing bike disciple of the 70s, 3Rensho, Miyuki and Cherubim formed the holy triumvirate of Japanese framebuilders.

Shin Konno, who founded Miyuki, gained accreditation to build JKA keirin frames, while Yoshi, 3Rensho’s founder, honed his craft by dissecting frames from the likes of Cinelli and re-brazing them. He even built batches of the red Specialized Allez made famous by the 80s film American Flyers. It’s unlikely you’ll ever see another Specialized roll off the production line with chromefaced Campagnolo dropouts… but if you ever see a second-hand one, buy it.

Shin and Yoshi’s outfits are sadly defunct, but in Shin-ichi, Hitoshi found a willing and highly talented builder to carry the torch. Quite literally.

‘This is all fillet-brazed steel,’ says Shin-ichi Konno of the bike that has Cyclist ’s eyes on stalks. ‘It’s Columbus Zona, but it has custom-drawn tubes with a CNC’D head tube and special dropouts. The fork is also steel. It’s still