Wound Up Composites is a cycling brand headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Wound Up Composites says every fork it sells is made from raw materials in Salt Lake City, and then a footnote adds: "We do, however, incorporate pre-made eyelets on some forks. Just trying to be strictly honest here, people." The forks come out of Advanced Composites Inc., the same factory that makes Cataract Oars.
Wound Up is a brand of Advanced Composites, whose address is 3030 W Directors Row. Its pitch is access. A bike brand with a major composites manufacturer behind it can use filament winding and CNC machines that a small builder would be unlikely to own, and Wound Up says it machines its own crowns, disc tabs, dropouts and canti bosses. The company says it has been making carbon forks for twenty years and brings in US-made fibers, epoxies, resins and aluminum.
The FAQ adds that custom frame builders often paint the forks to match their frames, while other riders like the crosswoven ebony look of the bare carbon. The line includes the Road X, a Gravel X disc fork, a Commuter, tandem forks, Team X Cross forks and Zephyr track forks.
A Wound Up fork is wound, not laid up from sheets. The company calls the Road X the world's only filament-wound carbon road fork, a claim only it makes, and says the winding is the same process Advanced Composites uses on aerospace parts. The Duo 2 tandem fork, which weighs 660 grams, is described as the first in the industry with a filament-wound, all-carbon crown.
Wound Up does not try to win the scale. "We're not weight weenies," its FAQ says, and it asks whether you would "prefer to shimmy and shudder all over the road in order to lose a few ounces." The Road X page agrees: it is not the lightest fork on the road, nor is it trying to be, and Road X forks weigh 528 to 740 grams depending on the version.
The company concedes that the look is polarizing. The FAQ says some riders praise the geometry as zen-like minimalism and others call it retro or dated. The company says it builds for utility foremost, with one basic geometry. The forks carry a three-year limited warranty.
Forks are made to order. The Road X page said in July 2024 that the lead time was four to six weeks, and backordered products ran 12 to 15 weeks that October. The site's footer starts its copyright line in 1997, and the eyelets are the only part the Made in the USA page owns up to using pre-made.
Wound Up says its carbon forks often last more than a decade with heavy use, yet it will not endorse riding one past eight years.
