Originally Posted by
unworthy1
I'm also sure that a blade top can be "massaged" a little to fit a given fork crown...probably was done all the time.
Yup. In fact, Reynolds' "Continental oval" and "Imperial oval" blades started out as the same round tube (aka "track fork blade"); they're just pressed into slightly different oval shapes. It's trivial to squish a Continental oval blade to fit an Imperial oval crown (but I've never tried the other way).