Originally Posted by
Bardleyrichard
He gave me many options for different butted tubes, but we ended up both deciding that the oversized, straight gauge, 0.9mm, 4130 will suit me well. See my reply above. We discussed the pros and cons of using butted tubing, and some of the pros were that the frame would be lighter, and that it would "feel" better. I couldn't care less about a little bit of added weight, my frame is huge and will be heavy anyway. And the "feel" issue might just work itself out by using longer than normal tubes, so I hope we made the right choice.
There are two ways of looking at butted tubing. One is as a design intended to structurally optimize the tubing shape. That thinking sorta crashes on the fact that the thickness is butted, not tapered in.
Another is as straight tubing with more weight at the ends to deal with the abuse of brazing. So since you don't need thickened tubing ends for TIG welding and since you probably do need overall thicker tubing for your size of bike, perfect solution.