Originally Posted by
sstorkel
Tell us: what was the wall thickness of Reynolds 531 bicycle tubes back in 1935? And what percentage of all bicycles produced world-wide used 531 as compared to 1020 steel?
I don't know the answer to that question and I'll bet you don't either. I don't know why they couldn't roll the tubes just as thin back then. The process had been developed about 40 years earlier.
How does the fact that more cheap bikes with thick 1020 tubing have been sold over the years than quality bikes with thin-walled tubing prove that tubing walls have gotten thinner in the last few decades?
My 1959 Carlton takes a 27.2 mm seatpost. That means that the walls are .7 mm thick. Not a lot of modern steel bikes have thinner walls than that. That's five decades.