tied & soldered spokes...
 

...how many of you do this for your street fixed gears? I searched a little but the results only seemed to apply to track applications and bikes of a certain vintage. Anybody do this for daily street riding/commuting?

old technology, rarely used as far as i can tell... how many people here even build their own wheels would be a more popular question

According to Jobst Brandt, in The Bicycle Wheel (3rd Edition, page 76):

Spokes can be tied and soldered together with a fine wire at the places where they are interlaced. This practice was used on high-wheeled bicycles after the introduction of cross-laced spoking to prevent broken spokes from lashing about and causing a crash. These spokes could be over thirty inches long. This practice has been kept beyond its time as its original purpose has vanished. Its perpetuation has been justified by claims that it increases wheel strength.

Measurements and computations both show that there is no change in lateral stiffness, torsional stiffness, or strength (in small- or large-flange wheels) between tied and untied spokes. Although crossed spokes fret and notch each other after prolonged use, restraining this motion does not cause any changes that can be measured. The only benefit of this tying and soldering is restraint of broken spokes. Otherwise the procedure has no value for road wheels and no value for track-racing wheels where it is still sometimes used.

The Schwinn Paramount track bikes had tied and soldered spokes if Im not mistaken?

excellent quote dark

I do

^i just built my first set as well

im approaching 50 wheelsets over the last two years.. wheeeee. tying and soldering is unecessary, as stated above. its a fun tradition, and kinda cool, but pointless in this era.

ive built a wooden wheelset, that was an interesting challenge.

I've built my own wheels and tied and soldered a couple sets. On one of the sets I plowed my bike straight into a curb at 10 mph and blew the tube and bollocksed up the tire pretty bad, but the wheel was perfectly true. I don't know if it has anything to do with tying and soldering the wheel, but that's just what happened.

Sure looks cool, though.

I am inclined to go with Jobst Brandt's view because of his engineering background, but just wanted to see/hear if anyone had done this on a bike with daily applications. Sounds like no on most counts. Still a cool idea...

Built my first one a month or two ago, it's holding up fine now.

I plan on building all my own wheels from now on.

i've built 8ish wheels in the last 3 years.

anyone have pics of tying and soldering looking cool?

I'm familiar with the Bicycle Wheel book, but last year I came across a bike with wheels that I had built and tied and soldered 25 years ago and then sold it. The guy who bought it, and still owns it, barely has the mechanical aptitude to tie his shoes let alone true a bike wheel. In 25 years he had never trued the wheels nor had them trued for him. I did some tuneups on his bike for him, but the wheels were still 100% perfect.

ask him if he jumps curbs hahah

Yes, but it would be the subject of a different thread.

http://www.sitemason.com/files/fHWt9...s.jpg/main.jpg

How do you ride a bike for 25 years and not wear through the rims?

How do you ride a bike for 25 years and not wear through the rims?


________________


That's why they invented tires.

use tires?

My spokes don't look as clean as the pics above but I didn't do it so...

http://velospace.org/files/112712.jpg
http://velospace.org/files/Outside7.jpg

Clip off that loose strand, Big. It's sharp.

Sure you can. But if you want to run a balloon up against your spokes in order to make your bike sound like an even better motorcycle, you have to be careful that the balloon doesn't line up with the ties.

I built wheels 6 last month (2 for myself and 4 for friends)

the first track bike i bought was from a guy who raced in the 70's, it came with soldered super champion gentleman's/sunshine hubs. i rode those wheels forever and never had them trued. i also never realized how rough my ride was until i got a new wheelset.

There's some talk about "increasing torsional stiffness" and "lateral stiffness" and "increasing the virtual flange height of the hub."

And, while lateral stiffness is a good thing in wheels, I haven't read any real information supporting this claim. I might be wrong, but I don't think most 32/36 spoke wheels that you would be tying really have a problem with lateral stiffness.

See: http://www.competitivecyclist.com/ro...962.266.0.html for modern marketing copy about it.

As far as I know, there are two ways for rims to go untrue (which seems to be the argument made in this thread):
1) The rim gets deformed due to an exerted stress beyond the elastic limits of whatever material it is made of.
2) The spokes stretch or the nipples simply unscrew some amount.

I don't see how this technique would have an influence on either of those.

http://yarchive.net/bike/tying-and-soldering.html

I'm inclined to agree. If tying and soldering spokes was such a big deal, you'd see it at the pro level or world record attempts where this would matter. You don't. So the bottom line is that it doesn't do anything except add weight.

Well, the pros wouldn't care so much about durability and wheels staying in true for years, would they? They'd just flip on a new carbon fiber-titanium-uranium wheel, whatever. I really don't know if tying and soldering is a good thing to do or not. Hardly anyone does it anymore, tho it does seem to be resurfacing. Everything old is new again. I rarely bother with it any more. The thing I posted before was just an interesting anecdotal bit of evidence, though, whatever that's worth. I was amazed to see that wheel still perfectly true after all these years.