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Yes I've owned ancient 531 frames with the skinniest stays, ridden them really hard and they last forever so I take for granted that steel is eternal.
It seems that when you stray from the well worn path with frame design you're on your own and small design flaws can kill seemingly tough frames whilst the trad framebuilder rule book has learned all this stuff the hard way!
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I think in my case it was the thinnest part of the stay and it had also been joined there, so double whammy. Similar thing to what killed my 4SD though that was more shit dropout design than manufacturing issue.