On Friday, July 5, 2019 at 5:42:41 PM UTC-7, James wrote:
On 6/7/19 9:24 am, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 7/5/2019 4:34 PM, Tom Kunich wrote:

If this is the case, why not have any sort of spoke installed and not
have the stiffest steel possible? Duhhhhhh.

Sorry, that bit of blather was too vague to make sense.

But about "any sort of spoke": If you want a stiffer wheel, use thicker
spokes. Or use more spokes. Or read _The Bicycle Wheel_ which contains
actual (gasp!) engineering instead of folklore. Try to understand it. I
can help.



Maybe the spokes are so loose in Tom's loosely tensioned wheel, as to go
slack when he pushes the rim sideways?

They probably rattle in use too.

James, they don't appear to be so loose as to go slack. What it seems to be is that the spoke nipple beds appear to be slightly flexible. The clincher wheels with very tight spokes compress the spoke nipple beds to their limit and so there's no problem. The 55 mm rims are using the 50 mm spoke set and so they cannot be tensioned enough even with the spokes tightened to their limit.

These rims are so mechanically strong that they cannot be flexed so the only thing that it can be is the less tight spokes.