Wheels

[andygates]

The spoked wheel is one of the critical technologies that makes bikes work: it is incredibly strong, incredibly light, and pretty much changed the world.  The social revolution that came with the bike depends on the cheap reliable ubiquity of tensioned, tangentially-spoked wheels.

Building wheels makes me smile.  The whole blacksmith thing comes in: taking bits and making a whole using skill and a little finesse; ending up with a whole greater than the sum of the parts.  It is to fettling what compiling is to code: you get something useable at the end of it, but you may need to frotz around a little first.  But it's not a black art, unlike, say, regex or the perfect flapjack.

These are my new race wheels: stock Bontrager hubs, DT Swiss RR 1.2 deep-section aero rims, laced up with black Sapim double-butted stainless spokes.  Should be tough and fast and durable.  The front is radial, mostly for looks; it's my first full-size radial wheel, and they're fussier to build than tangentially-spoked wheels.  And not finished a moment too soon, either: these are what I'm racing on on Sunday morning.  So if I screwed up, that's when I get to spit out my dental work :)

Comments

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

I've got a half-radial wheel on my Pinarello. It's a bit hard to see in that image (I haven't got a better one) but the side of the rear closest is radial while the side furthest away is 1-cross tangential. The front wheel is entirely radial.

I don't have posh deep-section rims. Frankly I suspect the advantage of a few grammes of weight and a minuscule amount of aero is lost in my big bobbly helmeted head. Not to mention the bike having a great big ape sat on top of it. I'd lose more weight by taking one fewer power gels and changing my shoes.

Mind you, I do have latex tubes in there...

But that's for the ride sensation. Really. No, really. And carbon fibre bottle cages are seriously just for the bling. I'm not a weight weenie at all.

Still wanna megadoodle.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Ride feel is exactly why I'm a bit of a weight weenie on wheels: lower rotating weight gives snappier riding. Not as much as rigidity, but noticeable.