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

[thudthwacker.livejournal.com]

...it's my first full-size radial wheel, and they're fussier to build than tangentially-spoked wheels.

I know that I could just look this up, but I tend to run with the assumption that geeks of all stripes (computer, scifi, bike, car, etc.) take simple pleasure in explaining things to them wot don't grok it already. So: what's the difference, in terms of assembly and performance, between radially and tangentially spoked wheels?

[xeeny.livejournal.com]

Speaking as a coder, I really, really hope that making wheels is nothing like hacking or compiling. Otherwise, you'll need about a zillion test rides before you could use it in anger...