Later edit: this post contains a stupid error in the first sentence.


I agree - I can't understand why he thinks the spokes work like columns. Even the most basic look at the way they are arranged - the way the elbow of a loose spoke will just poke right through the hole in the hub when you are threading it in or out and of course the nature of the flanged nipple makes clear that the spokes are never pushing into the hub and always pulling in tension. Thinking about it, I can't see how the spokes tension can go negative either. I think if they went that loose, they would soon break from fatigue. I've had some rear wheel spokes break in both my small wheeled bikes - in both cases from slack tensioning of the wheels by shoddy factory wheel building. Five went in my Merc and six in my Strida copy and both very early in the lives of the bikes. The merc has been great since I replaced them and trued the wheel - nearly three thousand miles since I had a problem with the wheels.