The paper describes a theoretical study on the speed of the torsional elastic waves propagating in a circular cylinder whose outer radius varies periodically as a harmonic function of the axial coordinate. The approximate solution for the phase speed has been obtained using the perturbation technique for sinusoidal modulation of small amplitude. It is shown that the wave speed in the cylinder with a corrugated outer surface is less than that in a smooth cylinder by the square of the amplitude of the surface perturbation. This theoretical prediction agrees reasonably with an experimental observation reported earlier. It is also shown that the wave speed reduction due to the surface corrugation becomes larger for a thinner cylinder and for a bigger density of corrugation.