Bicycle spokes

[joff1000]

Hello,
Could someone please give me some advise on bending the non nipple end
when making some bicycle spokes. I will be using 2mm stainless.
Should I heat the wire to red hot before bending?
Once bent should I anneal the wire? If so what is the process for this?
Once the wire is bent should the bends be case hardened?
Many thanks in advance for your advise..

[BMatthews]

Spokes are made from simple and non hardened stainless steel. It's soft enough to bend easily and doesn't require any post heating or annealing or any form of hardening. I know because I've bent and broken a few in my time what with 5 bikes in the house.

Really sharp bends may cause a problem. If you require the maximum strength for something special then a cheap set of pliers with a radius ground into the edge of the jaws to allow the spoke to bend with a small inner radius will help a lot. If it's only for pushrod ends with Z bends or similar then just bend away.

[robbie]

:eek: you only have 5 bikes?

[BMatthews]

...Not counting the wife's single one... yeah.

Two trail bikes and three commuter specials. I bike to work year round and like to have a spare or two handy for when one is laid up with mechanical woes... or if it just gets too dirty to ride... :D

But if it helps calm you down I've got enough bits for about two more.....

I'm just a "Born Again Cyclist"... :D

PS: Did I mention I lace up my own wheels as well?

[ZAGNUT]

PS: Did I mention I lace up my own wheels as well?

with one of those fancy-schmancy truing stands?? real men use an old crusty fork for lacing and truing....


dave

[BMatthews]

No fancy shmancy nancy stand for me. I use an old "water pipe" bike frame from the trash heap and a clothespin..... I also have a clamp on bar and machinists dial guage so I can set the side to side runout to within 10 thou easily and by the numbers.... :D

But we digress..... I still want to know what joff is using the spokes for. He seems terribly concerned with their strength.

[Salto]

My Canterbury Sailplanes F20 EPP slope soarer uses bike spokes for the elevator and aileron pushrods. The nipple end makes a nice slim Z bend at the servo, and the threaded end goes into a plastic clevis. The elevator servo location is determined by the spoke length. Kind of neat, but a bit heavy.

Graham.
Cannondale road bike
Cannondale touring bike
Old fashioned mountain bike (no nancy suspension)
Wife's Giant road bike
Wife's Klein Al. mountain bike
2 Kid's bikes.

[Usta Bee]

My Canterbury Sailplanes F20 EPP slope soarer uses bike spokes for the elevator and aileron pushrods.

Straight guage spokes, butted spokes, straight pull spokes, bladed spokes, oval spokes, titanium spokes, Kevlar spokes.........I'm starting to sound like Bubba from "Forrest Gump". :D

[Sparky Paul]

When I got into r/c big time, my bike lost its spokes one by one... couldn't afford the Du-bro threaded ends for the clevises..
Now I can, and have only 6 bikes to keep tuned.
The newest Mongoose INFERNOwith the shocks really helps on the washroad trails out back. The GT Terra was beating me to death with the bumping and thumping..

[BMatthews]

Are ALL modelers this serious about bike riding? I can't believe the number of responses about this!

I've even been looking at building a recumbent lowracer or possibly a lowracer lean sterring trike. It's a MADNESS I tell you!

[Sparky Paul]

15 years ago I thought nothing of riding 20-30 miles on Sat -and- Sun...
Nowadays I think even less of it... :)
Traffic on the street is just too dangerous..
Out back in the desert though there's lots of places to go... lots of uphills..
Climbing is where it's at with biking.

[Usta Bee]

Are ALL modelers this serious about bike riding? I can't believe the number of responses about this!

I've even been looking at building a recumbent lowracer or possibly a lowracer lean sterring trike. It's a MADNESS I tell you!

Geeks of a feather flock together !. :D

I've even owned two recumbents too.

My typical ride is 30-70 miles long.

I wonder how hard it'd be to build this from foam and carbon :D ....

[Usta Bee]

Lil bit O' spoke info for ya: www.wheelsmith.com
www.dtswiss.com


P.S. I've met Lance Armstrong and Greg LeMond too.

[Ben Diss]

Another roadie here. Haven't rode a century in a couple years as the building/flying have cut into my training. Haven't bought pushrods for years either as there is nothing better than spokes.

-Ben

[Weisse Luft]

Wow, I have seen this before some where! The answer is spokes are cold-worked from the upset head to the bend and the swaged center, if a butted spoke.

You do not want the bend to be annealed at all. Nor do you want any case hardening. You need good tools to accurately make the bend without raising stress risers on the surface of the wire.

[joff1000]

But we digress..... I still want to know what joff is using the spokes for. He seems terribly concerned with their strength.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the info chaps, maybe this will answer the above question.. http://www.pennyfarthingworldtour.com
I think that I am now going to redesign the hub to have a larger radi at the spoke elbow, and hopefully this will help the reliability..
Joff

[BMatthews]

At least tell us you carried a model airplane on one so this thread doesn't get deleted... :D

OK, as probably the only nut case in the world that is riding a PF you have to tell me. Just how the heck do you get on one of these and how do you stop at intersections without falling down?

Oh and while we're at it when you put on the brakes how do you avoid flipping right over onto your face thanks to the extremely high center of gravity?

Having asked all that and accusing you of being a nut case I have to say that you're MY kind of nut case. I salute you for your originality and.... er.... bravery.. :D

Joff, I take it from this post that you're having problems with the spokes breaking. Spokes work under tesion and the reason we use 3 x patterns is to set up the leverage to the spoke through the angles between the axle to teh spoke hole and the spoke to the rim. In your case the large front wheel means that you're using incredible torque with low rpms. If you're using a standard hub the load on teh spokes may be as high as 3 or 4 times what they normally experience from the drive train forces. Larger flange type hubs would be a big benifit in your case. Either the large flange track hubs or perhaps something custom made.

I see some "beads" about half way out. Are those spoke couplers?

[robbie]

as long as we are off subject... :rolleyes:
never met lance, but i borrowed one of his bikes for a short ride, though. :o
question: have you guys noticed all of the alternative materials used by scratch builders in these forums? bicycle spokes, all kinds of surplus motors, depron and fan fold foams, cling wrap, yogurt cup propellers, etc, etc.
i think it would be interesting to list all the materials besides balsa wood that folks are making planes out of. :cool:
btw, jof1000, is your question answered? :D
man these smilie things are dumb :)

[robbie]

the beads are probably where the spokes are tied and soldered.
if you are using a sturmey archer, that means it is either the aw, and you are running a brake? or it is one of those acs or asc or whatever it is called. that was the only 3 speed fix gear i am aware of. out of production.
come to think of it, i think there is a czech guy making pf bikes too. mesicek or something like that?
p.s. airplanes? what airplanes?

[BMatthews]

the beads are probably where the spokes are tied and soldered.....

Nope, one of his pics shows that they are just outboard of the cross. The thot plickens.....

I've seen Lance on TV, does that count? :D One thing for sure when you look up "determination" in the dictionary there should be a picture of Lance Armstrong in there.

[joff1000]

Hiya,
well I did make a pulse jet engine to fit to the PF, and they do use them in model aircraft.. (hope that counts). The spokes in the photo arn't tied, they are connector pieces. This way I can use a very stronge DT spoke and connect it to a straight piece that I have made. I roll the threads and have never had one break, and this has so far proved to be 100% reliable. Just it dosn't look all that nice.. So this is why I would like to make them one piece, have done this before, but they do tend to break at the hub..
Joff

[Salto]

So this is why I would like to make them one piece, have done this before, but they do tend to break at the hub..
Joff

Joff,

If your problem is spokes breaking at the centre, and if I view the shots of your wheels correctly, then I can pass on some useful information.

Years ago in another life I built a solar powered car and raced it 3000km across Australia in the World Solar Challenge. I made custom wheels with wide hubs that fitted over turned hubs. We used standard bike spokes and standard mountain bike rims. We made a wheel durability test rig on a trailer and towed it about 1000km with no problems.

On about day 2 into the race we started breaking spokes. No big problem, we had 2 spare sets of wheels and could re-spoke wheels at night. It was only towards the end of the race that one observant member of our team noticed that the spokes that broke were the ones with the upset heads on the outside of the hub flanges (some heads pointed outwards, some inwards). The load on these spokes tended to "un-bend" the 90 Deg. bend at the head end, and this was opening up stress cracks on the inside of the bend, thus precipitating a tensile fatigue failure. We broke about 30 spokes, and they were always these outside facing ones.

Now, if I see correctly, some of (or all) your heads point outwards, so the above issue may be worth looking at.

Good luck with the trip.

Graham.

[Dereck]

Born-again roadie here too!

In 1974, got to 1st cat in England, then joined the air force, couldn't race so quit sport.

2003, started up again after getting wife to ride some to get her in shape. 2003, did about 1000 miles, 2004, just made 4000. Am going to do better, drop another 2- 30 lbs and really show my doc what serious exercise can do. Bets amongst folk who claimm to know me suggest I might even get a racing licence this year, if I can keep the bugs of everyday life off my bumper.

Am going to do a century this year. Not so remarkable, except that I never had the urge to ride more than 50 or so miles when I did this cycling thing real serious. My favourite races were short circuit crits, suspect I was really a 'trackie' except there weren't any tracks to ride where I grew up... The local big century is round on the MD Eastern Shore, the "Seagull Century", where the biggest hill is a real steep driveway :). My kind of terrain :D

Once met Barry Hoban, and if you're talking about folk with real "palmares", often used to end up in a similar race to Beryl Burton - she lived about 40 miles from my home town. Few people were ever actually in a race with BB - men or women - she was awesome. Narrowly missed Lance, but got to chat briefly with Bob Roll, at the '03 Tour of Hope in DC - there is a wild character.

Have never tried a 'bent, though they seem real popular around DC where we live now. Even found a guy round here last week riding a British made Bob Jackson trike!

Present fleet is an Ultegra equipped Gunnar Sport - probably the best all-round bike I've owned, a Gunnar Rockhound hardtail MTB with front susp. that's grossly under-challenged, a Bianchi Pista "fixee" and a 1989 Holdsworth that's about to get re-built as a coffee bar special (low ratio triple, luggage rack wot gets left on all the time etc.).

Funnily enough, I didn't fly a lot last year, suspect putting in those 4K had something to do with it.

And yes, bike spokes made great pushrod ends, though the 14g ones are a pain to put tight bends into. 15/17 are better. I've found the swaged and threaded pushrods DuBro peddle are as handy, and as cheap, as bike spokes.

Dereck