I looked into getting a set of tied & soldered wheels a couple years ago and rejected it, eventually determining that 32 or 36 straight gauge spokes on an aero or semi-aero rim, with liberal amounts of Blue Loctite drizzled into the nipples, was sufficient to keep my rims true.
Tying and Soldering is an old school method of theoretically tightening up a wheelset and keeping it in vertical and horizontal true. Thin wire was twisted around each point where spokes crossed, then solder was dribbled onto the wire & spoke junction to keep it in place. It was thought that such a setup made the wheel stronger - and if a 1970's or early 80's vintage wheelset was whippy (yep, some were) then this probably made some sense. They are marketing them as do-everything-short-of-pool-table-smooth race wheels.
Here's what Competitive Cyclist says about the process:
But here's where we go bananas: This isn't just any set of handbuilts. We've gone ahead and tied and soldered the spokes. We use bee-keepers wire and lead-free solder. The wire does the work, and the solder keeps it in place. Why do we tie & solder? It hardens the wheels up in all dimensions. By tying & soldering them, it effectively increases the flange diameter of the hubs, increasing torsional stiffness. The interlaced crosses are locked together when you tie & solder them, which braces the spokes, making them laterally stiffer and more durable.Increases torsional and lateral stiffness, eh?
Gee, I wonder if anybody has ever tested that. Now who would have ever properly tested wheelbuilding techniques to see which methods might be empirically superior?
Oh yeah, Jobst Brandt. The wheelbuilding engineer. The invaluable Sheldon Brown (RIP) archived what Jobst said.
Hmmm... any difference in rigidity, according to Brandt, was statistically insignificant.With the hub rigidly secured, with its axle vertical, dial gauges were mounted at four equally spaced locations on the machine bed to measure rim deflections as a 35lb weight was sequentially hung on the wheel at these positions. The deflections were recorded for each location and averaged for each wheel before and after tying and soldering spokes.
The wheels were also measured for torsional rigidity in the same fixture, by a wire anchored in the valve hole and wrapped around the rim so that a 35 lb force could be applied tangential to the rim. Dial gauges located at two places 90 degrees apart in the quadrant away from the applied load were used to measure relative rotation between the wheel and hub.
Upon repeating the measurements after tying and soldering the spokes, no perceptible change, other than random measurement noise of a few thousandths of an inch, was detected.
Maybe back in the day, when wheels were so flexy that looking at them would put them out of true, it made sense to tie and solder. But when Brandt tested the technique - what, in 1992 or 1993? - it didn't make sense any longer. I suspect it truly doesn't make sense when you're talking about stout DT semi-aero rims on high quality DA hubs, with modern spokes. I don't know for a *fact* that it doesn't make a difference, but if Jobst tested it, and that was the result, I'm inclined to agree.
You can make up your own mind about whether Competitive Cyclist is selling wheels or horseshit here, but I'm putting my money with Jobst. I love the Competitive Cyclist catalog, love a lot of the gear and bikes they sell, and love the way Competitive Cyclist loves everything about bikes and bike culture. But this isn't the first time that their marketing caused me to shake my head and wonder what the hell they are trying to do, besides rolling cash. You can talk shit about Nashbar and Performance - and I do - but they don't seem to pull this kind of crap. You have to wonder if, in the long run, it's bad for cycling to sell useless products and services to the high end customers. If they ever catch on, those are big fish that won't buy from you again. Then again, maybe those BTGs on the $10k bikes never really do catch on. I don't know.
I guess the next thing they ought to start doing is selling a tubeless tire aging service - set up a room at the warehouse like a humidor, where, for $10 per month, Competitive will age your tubeless tires for you. It will have to be made out of Siberian Birch or perhaps Snakewood, put brass fixtures on the little drawers where the tubies are stored. Hey, if people are going to pay several hundred extra because putting on pedals and handlebars is too hard, and pay a couple hundred extra for disproven technology to 'strengthen' tires, why not? And while they're at it, maybe they could package the new wheelsets with small tubs of slipstream, any oily gel to rub on your knees to reduce wind resistance. 'Cuz you know, it's easier to ride in the slipstream...
7 comments:
My 2 pairs of race wheels for the track are tied and soldered 32 spoke jobs. Mavic GL330 rims on Suntour Superbe Pro hubs and Mavic GP4 rims on Campagnolo Record hubs. They were great wheels before they were tied and soldered but became sublime after.
However, that was the '80s and in the 21st century there is a new sublime kid on the block. I give thanks to the good Lord above for carbon fibre and I also give thanks to Garry Baker of Coast Cyclery for sponsoring me onto a pair of Corima 4 spokes.
http://www.corima.com/gb/produits/roues/default.cfm?family=roues_4batons
My old wheels feel like butter.
Jobst would also tell you that T&S comes from the days of high wheelers where a broken spoke=header.
Mike - that's kind of what I was thinking. Back when flex wasn't engineered in by CAD/CAM, but was instead put in by seat-of-the-pants, and all wheels were built flexy (because that's what the material science and design engineering of the day permitted) it probably made sense to T&S. Today I am pretty sure that rim design, spoke material/gauge and tension are much more relevant determinants of whether your wheel will flex. For the most part stiffness has been the sought after quality though with rims like the Deep Vee and DT 1.2 I know some people have talked about engineering in some flex with lower spoke tension and tire pressure.
Chris - Jobst would also probably point out a lot of uncomfortable facts if he was talking to us. I get the impression that's sort of his thing. Interesting that it comes from high wheelers - I seem to remember an article about building your own penny-farthing wheels discussing T&S'ing, along with building your spokes out of wire strand, threading 'em yourself and so forth. *Way* more hardcore than me.
Jim
The reason you still see T&S wheels at races like Flanders and Roubaix is a bit simpler than lateral stiffness and all that engineering/marketing intersectino bullshit. When you break a spoke, the tying keeps it from flapping around and tearing your rear derailleur or other useful bits off your bicycle.
But if Competitive Cyclist can capitalize on pro envy and keep a bit of old knowledge alive, god bless them for it.
Nice post, Jim. I definitely had mixed emotions when I saw their announcement they were selling tied and soldered wheels. On one hand, hooray for recognizing that old school handbuilts (T&S or no) can still be amazing things. If it means fewer squealing brakes and less of an aroma of burnt carbon in the local 30+ crit or (even worse) at Poolesville, I'm all for it.
On the other hand, this strikes me as another nail in the coffin of the quality, middle-of-the-road LBS. The whole idea is that you get to know the local shop scene, you ask around and find out who's got the best wheelbuilding rep in the area, and you wheedle/bribe with whatever you've got to get that guy to build you a set of wheels. Mail-order T&S wheels seems to me to be pretty much the high point of the idea that wheels, along with every other component, should come out of a box fully assembled with no actual knowledge of who built them. This is a hell of a lot of time, work, and if done properly, artistry going into a product where the end user has never met the creator. This bothers me somehow.
I really worry that the bike shop of the future will be one of two things: the brick and mortar outlet of a mail-order house like Performance, or a high-zoot bicycle "studio" with an espresso bar and a fitting area and nary a workstand in sight. Both are useful in their own ways, but something's missing there. The middle-of-the road "normal" bike shop that I grew up with and worked in is going to be replaced by mail-order authenticity, e.g., Competitive Cyclist offering tied and soldered wheels with J. Peterman-esque prose about the virtues of the "old-fashioned" approach.
Curmudgeonly regards from Reykjavik,
b
I have a few problems with Jobst's methods. For one, intuitively to me, t&s had the advantage of limiting the very small vibrations whereby the spokes rub against each other when the wheel is deflected to even minuscule degrees. He was, if i remember correctly, hanging weights from the rim and measuring the flex--not a real test of the forces exerted on a wheel in a sprint on rough roads. My biggest pet peeve is that my 32 spoke rear wheel (handbuilt and all) is constantly put out of true by my 180 lbs on rough roads. When this happens, the spokes begin to rub and make an annoying noise. If tying and soldering would stop this noise and slow down the wiggling loose of spoke by vibrations, happy day! Jobst is a genius for sure, but his theories should be taken with a grain of salt. Plenty of pro mechanics a bike riders still use these techniques for a reason. Besides, what's wrong with making wheels that look cool? Isn't that why you see Zipps and the like in Cat3/4 races?
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