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Tubes don’t fail suddenly, they will always fatigue fracture so you’ll get notice as long as you’re aware and keeping an eye. A key thing you can do is avoid bikes with short head tubes because the bending load on the downtube is far reduced with a longer head tube.
Jonny69-
Tubes don’t fail suddenly
The downtube of my Holdsworth definitely did. Was completely unannounced, nothing visually or audibly giving warning. I have the picture somewhere. Clean snap, not hidden under the shifter's collar, but beyond. There was hardly any rust inside the tube... The head tube isn't short either, frame is a 59cm ctc.
I'm not saying it always happens like this though...
veLLo
Having sold my Witcomb a few years back, I don't have an old bike I'd use regularly anymore (only my 1930s Parisian "Fisher", and my 1950/60s Holdsworth -possibly fake one anyway- which are both at my parents in France). I'll definitely want another project in the next couple of years. But something is always at the back of my mind with these old steel tubes... When will they fail and kill you? My paranoia comes from the above mentioned Holdsworth, and its down tube snapping (around shifter area, typical), a long time ago while riding it. Luckily it was at very slow speed, I didn't fall, the frame didn't completely collapsed, and Winston via Mario put a new tube on (it was when Mario expressed doubts on the Holdsworth pedigree of the frame). The day before I was bombing downhill with that bike, in heavy traffic, had the frame snapped then it would have been catastrophic. The misadventure didn't stop me from riding old bikes over the years (1960s Witconb, 1930s Sun tandem, 1970s Mercian and Mercier, all ridden without problems and sold to finance different projects), but every time I consider starting another project (looking at the cool eBay links posted here) a part of me is worried about this... as I would refurbish a bike to ride it, not hang on the wall...
How are you guys dealing/denying/managing that old steel inherent factor, as it's hard to track how a bike was taken care of in the past half century, regardless of the original quality of the build and tubing? Oh and I weigh 95kg... probably doesn't help...