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Stainless Steel
A family of steel alloys, usually containing 10-20% chromium, among other alloying elements. Stainless steel is rust-resistant, and very tough, but is generally not the best choice in applications where surface hardness is of primary importance, such as bearings. Stainless steel also has somewhat lower yield strength than steel alloys optimized for that characteristic, and is somewhat more difficult to weld, so it has only rarely been used for frame tubes. [Last sentence added by John Allen]
The primary bicycle application for stainless steel is for spokes. Virtually all modern high-quality spoked wheels have stainless-steel spokes.
Stainless steel is also used for high quality control cables.
