Sorry to be late to this subject. When Norris Lockley talked about Paul Reiss, I thought it was somebody else. The maker of the Reyhand bikes was listed everywhere A. I. Reiss, and his name was Andre.
The Reyhand story coincidentally is covered in the latest issue of Bicycle Quarterly, in a article co-written by myself and Raymond Henry. The bikes were gas-welded, and look like fillet-brazed. There are lots of detail photos of two Reyhands, so you can check the quality of the work yourself. There are references from the 1930s that talk about how Reiss welded his frames to obtain a "uniform molecular structure." A test with a very weak magnet shows that the "fillets" are steel, not brass. (The magnet sticks to the fillets of the Reyhand, but doesn't stick to the fillets of a Jack Taylor tandem.)
Welding was relatively common in France among constructeurs. Singer's early stem were welded, as I found out when I saw one stripped of chrome - the only brass was where the cable hanger and, I believe, the tubes for the bar clamp bolts were attached. Everything else was steel. The same for Singer's "unified" headtube-cum-headlugs. Of course, special lugs for tandems and oversize tubes also were "fillet-welded." Again, seeing an Herse tandem frame without paint showed that the lugs contained no brass, despite their "recharged," rounded profile.
By the way, if you haven't got our latest Bicycle Quarterly with the Reyhand story yet, it's in the mail. Give it 2-3 weeks - standard mail is slow, but first class no longer is affordable, now that the magazine is more than double its original size. -- Jan Heine Editor Bicycle Quarterly 140 Lakeside Ave #C Seattle WA 98122 http://www.bikequarterly.com