Originally Posted by
repechage
2. Do not forget that the steel at the end where the blades get the most bend is thicker walled, by a large margin 2 to 3 times the upper wall thickness due to the drawing process, and after bending its work hardened.
That's the reason Reynolds made such a fuss about their "taper gauge" fork blades. A straight gauge tube when tapered (22mm a the crown end down to 12mm at the dropout end) will get thicker at the dropout end. Reynolds addressed this by putting a long, gradual butt in their fork blade -- thick at the crown end and thinner at the dropout end -- so when the blade was tapered the end result would be a more or less uniform wall thickness for the entire length of the blade. Here's an end-on view of the crown and dropout ends of a pair of Reynolds 531 fork blades as shipped from the factory:
This was generally recognized as a Good Idea, and by the 80s most other tubing manufacturers had implemented similar practices with their fork blades.