ABSTRACT
Bicycles tend to be made in a traditional way using traditional materials. This section discusses some of the materials that are used and their properties. Steel has been a popular choice for bicycle construction since the start of cycling. Rolling changes the structure of the steel and needs to be followed by annealing and tempering stages. Tubing made from sheet steel is used in the construction of some utility bicycles, and the conduit tubing and trunking are used in building construction, which carries only minimum stresses. Low carbon steel is usually sufficiently strong for many components on bicycles, it is also cheap and plentiful, most steel suppliers can offer this readily off-the-shelf. Reynolds Tubing has been used for bicycle frames for over one hundred years; Reynolds invented the system of butting in 1898.
