Let me throw my opinion into the ring.
1) Forks fail below the crown, not the steerer tube
They are not the weak link. All the steel and Ti forks I have seen tested cracked where the legs are joined to the crown. The headset bearing supports steerer tubes very well, the steerer is not the weak link.
2) Tapered forks are for downtube size
Tapered forks were invented so you could use bigger downtubes (50-60mm) for carbon fiber bikes.
Framebuilders have this relationship backward. This is how it should be:
- Pick your downtube diameter
- Match your headtube diameter
- Design a fork to fit into this headtube
With steel bikes, very few people use more than a 38mm downtube. This is why I have been pushing for EC37. The headtube’s 40-42mm OD matches 95% of downtubes you would use on a modern steel bike.
So, from a technical perspective, tapered steel forks don’t make sense. People only use them for aesthetic reasons. This is because we got stuck with EC44/ZS44 HT in the first place.
Why don’t we have cast tapered fork crowns? Economics. It costs ~$3000-5000 to cut a casting mold. How many $40 fork crowns would you need to sell to break even? Probably 200-300.
Casting mold, somewhere in Taiwan:
