Don- I have heard of the same story. And that each country/company developed their own working processes reflecting the alloy. Columbus favored thermal treatments with their cromo based tubes and Reynolds used more work hardening steps due to the Manganese.
> Reynolds 531 DB Tubing : Seamed : Impossible ??
>
> I thought there was a REALLY GOOD reason why Reynolds NEVER made 531
> seamed tubing. I thought that there were strength problems in welding
> generic manganese-moly tubing. I'm not certain about this because
> certainly there were aircraft frames made in WWII with Reynolds 531
> tubing, but perhaps they had to be carefully brazed or the butts had
> to be overly large.
>
> Anyway, because 531 is not good for welding that's why just about all
> the seamed tubing in the world is chromoly, which loses less strength
> after welding.
>
> http://reynoldstechnology.biz/
>
> And that's why Reynolds only offers special air-hardened steels for
> welding purposes. I think the dirty little secret here is that only
> 531 and 753 are manganese-moly frames without chromium, because
> britain had better access to manganese than chromium, and all other
> series of reynolds steels are flavors of chromoly (where chromium is
> dominant over manganese, if any), actually.
>
> - Don Gillies
> San Diego, CA, USA
> _______________________________________________
Andrew R Stewart
Rochester, NY