Has anyone tried this before? I’d not even heard of it being done until recently. By the sounds of it, spokes are tied together and then soldered at the first crossover after each spoke leaves the hub.

I can only assume this makes the wheel stiffer but I don’t see how it adds strength, so why bother?

No measureable improvement according to tests. This makes sense as the only way the soldering could help is by transferring force from the spoke in tension to the one it crosses. it would only do that if you were accelerating (or braking with disc wheels) and you wont notice torsional stiffness in a wheel, only lateral or radial.

I’ve done it. You wrap wire around the cross closest to the rim, then seal it with solder. The idea, like you say, is to stiffen the wheel. It does seem to help a bit on road/cross/track wheels but to be honest I didn’t notice much difference on mtb wheels. Down sides are- it’s really easy to damage the spokes by over heating them, it costs a fortune (if you can even find someone to do it!) and it’s a pain if you snap a spoke. I did it more as an experiment. And cos it looks cool…

Probably a hangover from early in the last century when spoke material wasn’t as consistent.

Certainly overheating the spokes is a major issue – people use a gas torch to heat the spoke. Now I’m not 100% up on the materials involved but at about 350C the creep and fatigue strength of stainless is seriously degraded, and that increases with the length of time it’s kept at that temp. All you have to do is have someone ham-fisted with a torch get the surface >350 and you drastically weaken the spokes.

It is much more of a track/road thing, idea was to give the effect of a bigger hub flange & shorter spoke, so making the wheel stiffer. Not really noticable now with much better quality spokes & rims that allow higher tension compared to years ago. Although I am going to do my next set of wheels, haven’t had many people go for it on costs grounds because of how long it takes to do it neatly & properly.

If you live anywhere near exeter a guy called chaz it The bike shed there does it very well, think he did it for a couple of guys in the tour, http://www.thecyclepeople.com/shopdetails.asp?id=981.

I’d guess it’s about as effective as deflating your tubs between rides, or conditioning them in a wine cellar

Anyone here actually ridden a bike with tied and soldered spokes?

Sounds like a lot of STW heresay, for a change 😉

They stiffen up the wheel, and are still used by many pros (road and track). There is no real use/advantage for MTB, as you really do not want a totally stiff wheel when landing a stupid drop!

Are you saying mtb wheels provide “suspension” or the (implied) flex makes them last longer? Or something else?

I don’t see why having road wheels that are less forgiving or less comfortable are of any benefit whatsoever.

If it really made a difference then we’d all be doing it.

It is quite expensive and time consuming to tie and solder all the spokes, so yes that is why you would not want every set of wheels done this way.

The last time you dropped off a large drop, did you think to yourself, ‘You know, Jeremy, I’d much rather have had a stiffer wheel there’, or on the track, did you accelerate away and wonder what a stiffer rear wheel would have felt like, under a large amount of pedalling force.

Now answer honestly…!

🙂

The main thing, I guess comes down to time, expense and whether it is really worth it for the claimed benefits for road and track racing. And before you ask, yes, spokes do flex and when you land a jump on a MTB, if the spokes were tied and soldered, it would feel really rubbish!

My point is cheaper ways would have been found to achieve the same thing if it genuinely made a difference, or lots of people would do it – folk are not shy of spending alot on bikes eh?

Sorry I just cannot believe a tied wheel accelerates noticeably better. That’s not the same thing as stiffness.

You ‘cannot believe’???

That just makes me laugh. Going back to my original point, you have not ridden a bike or indeed done any tying, so you are just sitting there, wondering what difference it might make.

Brilliant!

Plenty holes to pick in what you have said too.

Try that then!

I’m not trying to put you off something, more that I would like you to maybe appreciate that tying and soldering does make a significant difference (to the right rider, not necessarily on a MTB). Its not some ‘nirvana’ solution, but it does add to wheel stiffness and aids good acceleration. On the flip-side, it is not something that I’d recommend to anyone planning on getting their wheels off the ground on a bike, as the wheel ends up with virtually no flex/spring.

Oh, and forgot to add, ‘Nice one Charlie’, lovely snowflake lacing there!

It doesn’t make a ‘significant’ difference-I’ve got my calulations somewhere but can’t be bothered to find them at the moment. It’s a tiny percentage increasement not really worth bothering with using modern materials.
I have both ridden on tied & untied wheels & cannot honestly tell any difference, but am not saying there isn’t a difference, hence part of the reason I will tie & solder my next pair-because I can & if there’s a slight improvement that’s not going to cost me a fortune I may as well have it.

ha ha snowflake, I did get sucked in there. Mind you the wheel only collapsed after 800 miles of touring.

Our wheelbuilder Mark Minting does a lot of tied n soldered wheels , mainly on my request – because it looks ace and harks back to the years of master craftsmen , lugged steel frames , artisan workmanship , handbuilt wheels and silk tubs .

Takes him about an hour a wheel .

Old scool loveliness , not sue performance or stiffness improves , there was a mention that on touring wheels makes them more robust .

Ive got a snowflake on the rear of my trials bike – works a treat, isn’t shy of a 5ft drop, but it is more flexy than a standard 3 cross.

Back of the fag packed calcs, without a full shakedown I cant say definitely but here is my thought process – think about it, 3 crossed spokes cross at about 30 degrees and are seperated at their ends by about 2″. At any point of rotation they carry approximately equal force in approximately the same direction, during a radial impact they do, during a lateral impact the same is true. The only time they carry uneven force is when the hub is trying to rotate in relation to the rim, then the trailing spoke is getting increased tension and the leading spoke is getting decreased tension. In the first case the spokes are under approximately the same tension and exhibit approximately the same strain, the cross location that would be tied remains the same on each spoke and the same relative to each other – i.e. assume it was 50% along the spoke, under tension it would still be 50% on both spokes, tying them together would provide no stress-sharing. In the second case you would have the trailing spoke under tension and the leading under lower tension, the cross point would change relative to each other as the relative centre point on each spoke would be in a different location due to the differing strains. At this point one spoke is transferring some of its stress to the other spoke, hence a slight increase in torsional stiffness is possibly the case, but you only get this under accel or *disc* braking.

I honestly believe the power of placebo has a greater effect in this situation than the benefits of soldering/tying.

This genuinely interests me actually.

Edit – on further thought, told you I was interested!….

IF the spokes are soldered at their cross point, the inner half of the spoke pair now resist torsional movement that happens when the spokes are horizontal and the wheel is loaded perpendicularly to this spoke position. In a normal 3 cross the spokes would rotate at the hub and take no load, however when soldered the inner spoke elbows can no longer rotate. This therefore means these horizontal spokes now get loaded in /bending/ as well as tension, and could well affect stiffness. This is quite a fascinating problem, I like arguing with myself over such things!

IIRC Nathan Rennie had his wheels done at soem point, possibly the Fort Bill WC round.