Originally Posted by
kraftwerk
I am fortunate to have had THE MOST interesting discussions with a REAL frame-builder. He was telling me a story of how his Columbus Tubing Supplier visited his booth of a trade show when he was displaying his frames. The Columbus 'Brass' asked him why he didn't put Columbus decal's on the finished frames ? ( He had piles of stickers back at his shop, which they constantly sent him). He couldn't really answer the guy, fact is: he couldn't honestly put the stickers on since he used Reynolds tube's on the seat-stays ( chain-stays?.. both ? - I don't remember exactly ) - but it stands to reason: Reynolds would work well back there.
Those of us that were pro builders back before heat treated tubing became available would sometimes mix Reynolds 531 and Columbus tubing to get the effect we wanted. For example I made a frame for myself in 1980 and in the front triangle I used a 20/23 gauge down tube with a 21/24 gauge top tube. Commonly available Columbus SL at the time made their DT and TT with slightly heavier .9/.6./9 wall thicknesses. In the rear triangle in the seat and chain stays I used Columbus SL because they were quite a bit lighter than their Reynolds cousins. I can't think of any circumstances where I would have wanted to reverse the combination. I liked that I could use a slightly lighter Reynolds top tube while with Columbus all the 3 main tubes in the front triangle had the same wall thickness.
After Reynolds came out with their heat treated 753 tubing, a bit later they created a 653 set. This was the same tubing with the same alloys but the main tubes were not heat treated but with 753 seat and chain stays. I loved that set and it was the favorite tubing of a couple of my colleagues back then too. The main 653 tubes were available in different wall thicknesses. The chain and seat stays out of this group were a lot lighter than what was commonly available in a 531 set. Keep in mind that 531 main tubes came in a variety of wall thicknesses too.