As you may or may not know, I am a huge advocate of tied and soldered wheels. I ride them on my fixies, my mountain bike, and my road bike. In my opinion they lend toughness and strength to a wheel that simply cannot be duplicated using any other method. A while back we sent Sam Miller a set of 36 hole tied and soldered wheels and he obtained a set of 48h wheels as well. According to Sam the 48’s died the first week, while the 36h t-n-s wheels are still going strong. The point is that there’s a lot more to building a durable wheel than just spoke count.Anyway, the point I’m trying to make here is that tied and soldered wheels are the bomb if you’re an abusive rider, however the one drawback is that the spokes can’t be re-used according to popular thought. A few months back I trashed my Pro Max to Fusion rear wheel and I was bummed because I was going to have to buy new spokes to rebuild it. Then a light went off, and I realized that it didn’t need to be rebuilt, it only required a rim swap. Well I called on the boys over at Handspun and my home slice Anthony whipped it up lickety split. No one over there had ever done a t-n-s rim swap, but according to him it was no problem. So there you go, one more negative of tied and soldered has been laid to rest. If you don’t believe me, try some for yourself. It’s a whole different ballgame.
4 comments:
Re-using spokes that have already been tensioned, ridden, retensioned, ridden some more, and crashed (damaged) is never a good idea. recycling is fun and all, but taking metal that has been bent (and thus weakening it), bending it back (weakening it further),and adding tension (stress), is a very bad idea. especially in an area like your wheels. Id hate see someone try this and have a wheel go all mavic R-sys on them.
I totally have to disagree with you.
I sought the council of some of the most experienced wheel builders in this country, as well as my own personal experience in rim swapping. All agree it's not a problem at all. And many many of them happily take apart wheels (in their personal lives) and re use the spokes. I have ridden thousands of miles on previously tensioned spokes and have never had an issue.
Spokes are bent all the time when lacing hubs, to no damage. Now if it was bent in half and kinked, then obviously you'd have a weakened area, however that was not the case with these spokes.
This may go down as one of those fundamental arguments that wheelbuilders and bike mechanics will debate for millenia but in every shop I have ever worked in and according to the experts I have access to, it is simply not an issue.
It is not seen as risky or cavalier, rather it is seen as a way to rebuild a wheel with a trashed rim economically and speedily.
Their may be a limit on how many times it is prudent to do this, but it has never come up in conversation regarding this topic.
Simply put, metal has a fatigue limit. Just because it can work doesn't mean its a good idea. Mechanics do A LOT of things to their own bikes that they would never do for someone that could potentially sue them. There is no way to test a spoke and determine if it's still good. By using old spokes you may have 20 good spokes and 12 bad ones. Be the unlucky fella that puts those 12 spokes in a group, with 20 stonger spokes pulling at full tension from the other side and you are in for a very sad day when your brand spankin new, limited edition, sparkle orange deep V tacos after a perfectly executed backwards 540pirouette to nipple twist. Or even worse a nice faceplant mid traffic along with broken teeth and a fat medical bill. To each their own but I really like my OG teeth and I have more spokes than insurance.
You make some very valid arguments sir, however I don't choose to operate on theory, I operate on experience.
I will definitely agree that I wouldn't re-use spokes from a wheel that was old and janky (however your personal experience leads you to qualify something as "janky"), I also probably wouldn't reuse spokes that have been ridden 5000 miles. Discretion is, as with most things in life, something that must be used in this situation.
However,
No one with whom I have spoken to about this, have ever reported any problem in all the miles that they have ridden on a re used spokes. The idea that spokes are universally one build and done vastly underestimates the structural properties of a steel spoke under tension.
I can't recall ever coming across a "bad" spoke, nor do I feel that being ridden will make a spoke bad. Typically, in my experiences and not including loaded touring 50+lbs of gear, spokes break because of a wheel's tension becoming unbalanced due to some trauma or perhaps incompetent wheel building. The simple act of being used or tensioned doesn't structurally damage the spoke.
Anyway, a person should definitely use their own judgement and decide what they feel comfortable with. I just don't want anyone out there to think that once a spoke has been tensioned it's dead. That would lead to alot of wasted spokes and unnecessary money spent.
Be safe, stay smart. think for yourselves.
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