Originally Posted by
rjones28
Why does it mean that it's not a favored variety?
Carbon is an amazing element because it forms an incredible variety of bonds to an incredible variety of other elements. Even within knife steel, for example, there are hundreds of varieties of alloys with different compositions and heat treatment. In bike tubing, Reynolds has series from... probably very low through 531, 853, and 953. Columbus has Spirit, XCr, and others I can't remember off the top of my head. Then there's Tange, True Temper used to before they went to focus on golf shafts, and on and on. Most of the good framebuilders state what tubing they use. For the ones they don't, why not? I can't imagine it's because they're shy about using high-quality tubing.