TPI July 2014

Steel tubes

Steel tubes are the basic tubing product, and every improved version quickly becomes, in its turn, basic. When, in 1897, the British company John Reynolds developed a process for making butted steel tubes – thicker at the ends than in the middle – the strong yet lightweight result was a new staple of bicycle manufacture. Corrugated stainless steel tubing (CSST) – continuous, flexible pipe with an exterior PVC covering – was a novelty a quarter-century ago. Now, at least 50 per cent of the new houses in the US using natural gas for heating or cooking have CSST installed. And steel tubes continue to figure prominently in industrial and aesthetic design. The voiceless organ pipes that distinguish such interiors as the General Assembly of the United Nations were inspired by the mechanical imagery of “basic” steel tubing.

In the world of materials and forms a steel tube is, in a very basic sense, the gold standard.