The Basics of Wheel Alignment and Wheelbuilding

You'll find a reasonable tutorial on the basics of wheel alignment and
wheelbuilding at www.bikewebsite.com
Have fun!
- Jeff -

You'll find a reasonable tutorial on the basics of wheel alignment and
wheelbuilding at www.bikewebsite.com
Have fun!
- Jeff -

Nothing at all about stress relieving.

Pressing on the rim, against the axle end, will untwist spokes but it is
difficult to press hard enough to relieve internal stresses in
individual spokes that way. Better to add a step: wearing heavy
gloves, grasp pairs of spokes and squeeze hard, repeating all around the
wheel. Done properly, this will practically eliminate the need for
later truing and the spokes will last a long, long, time.

On Fri, 30 Jul 2004 17:13:50 GMT, Ted
wrote:


You'll find a reasonable tutorial on the basics of wheel alignment and
wheelbuilding at www.bikewebsite.com
Have fun!
- Jeff -

Nothing at all about stress relieving.

Pressing on the rim, against the axle end, will untwist spokes but it is
difficult to press hard enough to relieve internal stresses in
individual spokes that way. Better to add a step: wearing heavy
gloves, grasp pairs of spokes and squeeze hard, repeating all around the
wheel. Done properly, this will practically eliminate the need for
later truing and the spokes will last a long, long, time.

Dear Ted,

Outside of posts on rec.bicycles.tech and references to
Jobst's book, do you know of any studies, tests, or web
pages that address what we're calling "stress relieving" and
"stress relief"?

The quotation marks are used only to broaden the question,
since there may be other names and methods for
spoke-squeezing, as well as other claims for the process is
supposed to do to the spokes.

Sheldon Brown, for example, quotes Jobst, but gives the
spokes a twist with a smooth crank arm instead of squeezing
them:

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/wheelbuild.html#seating

It would be interesting to find out if Japanese Keirin
bicycle mechanics squeeze or twist spokes. Maybe John Dacey
knows?

Carl Fogel

Wrote:
On Fri, 30 Jul 2004 17:13:50 GMT, Ted
wrote:


You'll find a reasonable tutorial on the basics of wheel alignment
and
wheelbuilding at www.bikewebsite.com
Have fun!
- Jeff -

Nothing at all about stress relieving.

Pressing on the rim, against the axle end, will untwist spokes but it
is
difficult to press hard enough to relieve internal stresses in
individual spokes that way. Better to add a step: wearing heavy
gloves, grasp pairs of spokes and squeeze hard, repeating all around
the
wheel. Done properly, this will practically eliminate the need for
later truing and the spokes will last a long, long, time.

Dear Ted,

Outside of posts on rec.bicycles.tech and references to
Jobst's book, do you know of any studies, tests, or web
pages that address what we're calling "stress relieving" and
"stress relief"?

The quotation marks are used only to broaden the question,
since there may be other names and methods for
spoke-squeezing, as well as other claims for the process is
supposed to do to the spokes.

Sheldon Brown, for example, quotes Jobst, but gives the
spokes a twist with a smooth crank arm instead of squeezing
them:

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/wheelbuild.html#seating

It would be interesting to find out if Japanese Keirin
bicycle mechanics squeeze or twist spokes. Maybe John Dacey
knows?

Carl Fogel

http://yarchive.net/bike/stress_relieve.html

Might be worth a look.


--
daveornee

Bicycling 1/2 century

On Sat, 31 Jul 2004 07:06:06 +1000, daveornee
wrote:


Wrote:
On Fri, 30 Jul 2004 17:13:50 GMT, Ted
wrote:


You'll find a reasonable tutorial on the basics of wheel alignment
and
wheelbuilding at www.bikewebsite.com
Have fun!
- Jeff -

Nothing at all about stress relieving.

Pressing on the rim, against the axle end, will untwist spokes but it
is
difficult to press hard enough to relieve internal stresses in
individual spokes that way. Better to add a step: wearing heavy
gloves, grasp pairs of spokes and squeeze hard, repeating all around
the
wheel. Done properly, this will practically eliminate the need for
later truing and the spokes will last a long, long, time.

Dear Ted,

Outside of posts on rec.bicycles.tech and references to
Jobst's book, do you know of any studies, tests, or web
pages that address what we're calling "stress relieving" and
"stress relief"?

The quotation marks are used only to broaden the question,
since there may be other names and methods for
spoke-squeezing, as well as other claims for the process is
supposed to do to the spokes.

Sheldon Brown, for example, quotes Jobst, but gives the
spokes a twist with a smooth crank arm instead of squeezing
them:

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/wheelbuild.html#seating

It would be interesting to find out if Japanese Keirin
bicycle mechanics squeeze or twist spokes. Maybe John Dacey
knows?

Carl Fogel

http://yarchive.net/bike/stress_relieve.html

Might be worth a look.

Dear Dave,

Yes, that's a typical 1998 rec.bicycles.tech thread with the
usual suspects. It's one of the exchanges that led me to
wonder about the matter. Here's a fair example:

That is why I asked for references to hard scientific papers, a
mathematical explanation or other such research.

The book gives both an explanation and experimental methods by which
you can convince yourself of these effects. Had someone written about
it previously, I would not have written "the Bicycle Wheel". Much of
what the book contains could previously not be found in any
literature. The work of Karl Wiedemer is cited.

Your book contained no mathematics on this topic, no results of
proper controlled experiments on the cause of the effects and no
references that I could look up. In particular, I was extremely
surprised that it didn't seem to contain any references to where
you had published your analyses and experiments in the scientific
literature.

Well! I guess that means it is all wrong as you state.

Yes, I have tried doing a literature search, but found nothing.

As you see, I found more than you. With help I located Karl
Wiedemer's publication on the subject. Prof. Wiedemer, now
retired, did his analysis at the same time I did and he also had
no references because it was new work in a field that had progressed
without analysis for a long time. Prof. Pippard in England wrote
extensively on the subject but never discovered the mode of
wheel loading and deflections that I and Wiedemer presented.
As I said, I made the analysis by measurement and was rejected
by professors of engineering. When I presented the finite element
analysis, these same people chose to change the subject and get
back to "serious" work.

[ and so on]

Googling for "karl wiedemer" produces four other pages, all
in German, one on safety devices for coal dust, one on blast
furnace slag, one on the history of some club from 1896, and
two other in pdf format that Google does not offer to
translate.

Spoke-squeezing is an intriguingly mysterious subject to
research. I remain agnostic, wavering one way and the other,
but haven't seen any experimental data or analyses involving
bicycle spokes. If you have the 3rd edition, perhaps you
could peek at the Wiedemer stuff and give me your thoughts
on it?

Carl Fogel

wrote:

snip

Spoke-squeezing is an intriguingly mysterious subject to
research. I remain agnostic, wavering one way and the other,
but haven't seen any experimental data or analyses involving
bicycle spokes. If you have the 3rd edition, perhaps you
could peek at the Wiedemer stuff and give me your thoughts
on it?

you may also want to consider this question:

q: elevator safety certification requires loading the cab to double
it's "safe working load". this is to test the wire ropes that suspend
it. the reason is that fracture mechanics predict that this process
will typically reveal by failure any latent flaws. but, if we extend
spoke squeezing theory, wouldn't this overload procedure also prevent
fatigue of elevator cables?

a: no. elevator cables still fatigue and need regular testing,
inspection & replacement.

the bottom line is that there is no quantification or testing of this
spoke squeeze theory. squeezing "as hard as you can" is no more
scientific than building with spoke tension "as high as the rim can
bear". i would suggest to you that the reason academics "change the
subject and get back to "serious" work" is because this theory is mere
speculation - it's author has shown no basis in statistical fact, and
most definitely not by metallurgical analysis.

wrote:
[Jobst Brandt wrote in a 1998 exchange now on yarchive.net]
As you see, I found more than you. With help I located Karl
Wiedemer's publication on the subject. Prof. Wiedemer, now
retired, did his analysis at the same time I did and he also had
no references because it was new work in a field that had progressed
without analysis for a long time. Prof. Pippard in England wrote
extensively on the subject but never discovered the mode of
wheel loading and deflections that I and Wiedemer presented.
As I said, I made the analysis by measurement and was rejected
by professors of engineering. When I presented the finite element
analysis, these same people chose to change the subject and get
back to "serious" work.

Googling for "karl wiedemer" produces four other pages, all
in German, one on safety devices for coal dust, one on blast
furnace slag, one on the history of some club from 1896, and
two other in pdf format that Google does not offer to
translate.

Spoke-squeezing is an intriguingly mysterious subject to
research. I remain agnostic, wavering one way and the other,
but haven't seen any experimental data or analyses involving
bicycle spokes. If you have the 3rd edition, perhaps you
could peek at the Wiedemer stuff and give me your thoughts
on it?

The reference to Karl Wiedemer's article is in the Bibliography after
the tables of equations used. It is:

Wiedemer, K. "Kraftverteilung am Speichenrad", Konstruktion, Vol. 2,
pp. 64-66, 1962.

This probably translates as "Strength of a spoked wheel" or "Stress
distribution in a spoked wheel" or something close to that. From what
Jobst says above, I expect that it is an analysis of the deflections of
rim and spokes, along the lines of what Jobst did later with finite
element analysis. It might be relevant to the "hub stands on the
prestressed spokes" argument but I doubt it says anything about stress
relieving of spokes.

The yarchive.net interchange where someone flames Jobst because his book
isn't peer-reviewed is a complete red herring. His book is a monograph,
a detailed treatment of a subject which doesn't slot neatly into a scientific
journal's predefined niche. There's a long and honorable tradition of
these in scientific and technical publishing.

Carl Fogel writes:

You'll find a reasonable tutorial on the basics of wheel
alignment and wheelbuilding at www.bikewebsite.com

Have fun!

Nothing at all about stress relieving.

Pressing on the rim, against the axle end, will untwist spokes
but it is difficult to press hard enough to relieve internal
stresses in individual spokes that way. Better to add a step:
wearing heavy gloves, grasp pairs of spokes and squeeze hard,
repeating all around the wheel. Done properly, this will
practically eliminate the need for later truing and the spokes
will last a long, long, time.

Outside of posts on rec.bicycles.tech and references to Jobst's
book, do you know of any studies, tests, or web pages that address
what we're calling "stress relieving" and "stress relief"?

The quotation marks are used only to broaden the question, since
there may be other names and methods for spoke-squeezing, as well
as other claims for the process is supposed to do to the spokes.

Sheldon Brown, for example, quotes Jobst, but gives the spokes a
twist with a smooth crank arm instead of squeezing them:

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/wheelbuild.html#seating

It would be interesting to find out if Japanese Keirin bicycle
mechanics squeeze or twist spokes. Maybe John Dacey knows?

"Squeezing" is a poor description for stress relieving because
squeezing is not the active part of this exercise but rather spoke
stretching. That one can stretch spokes by drawing parallel spokes
together at midspan should be self evident to anyone who understands
tension in wires and the cosine function. That taking a tensile
element to yield and then relaxing it will guarantee uniform stress is
undeniable even without understanding strength of materials. Logic
alone suffices.

Pressing on the rim can slacken spokes (therefore allow untwisting)
but it cannot raise spoke tension significantly and not enough to
cause yielding in any effective proportions. Acoustic response
(clicking) seems not to be understood, or the proponents would not
think they are stress relieving their spokes. Untwisting, whether by
riding or by this method, will cause wheel misalignment. Maybe that
is why people believe they stretched spokes.

http://yarchive.net/bike/stress_relieve.html

Might be worth a look.

Yes, that's a typical 1998 rec.bicycles.tech thread with the
usual suspects. It's one of the exchanges that led me to
wonder about the matter. Here's a fair example:

That is why I asked for references to hard scientific papers, a
mathematical explanation or other such research.

The book gives both an explanation and experimental methods by
which you can convince yourself of these effects. Had someone
written about it previously, I would not have written "the
Bicycle Wheel". Much of what the book contains could previously
not be found in any literature. The work of Karl Wiedemer is
cited.

Your book contained no mathematics on this topic, no results of
proper controlled experiments on the cause of the effects and no
references that I could look up. In particular, I was extremely
surprised that it didn't seem to contain any references to where
you had published your analyses and experiments in the scientific
literature.

Well! I guess that means it is all wrong as you state.

Yes, I have tried doing a literature search, but found nothing.

As you see, I found more than you. With help I located Karl
Wiedemer's publication on the subject. Prof. Wiedemer, now
retired, did his analysis at the same time I did and he also had no
references because it was new work in a field that had progressed
without analysis for a long time. Prof. Pippard in England wrote
extensively on the subject but never discovered the mode of wheel
loading and deflections that I and Wiedemer presented. As I said,
I made the analysis by measurement and was rejected by professors
of engineering. When I presented the finite element analysis, these
same people chose to change the subject and get back to "serious"
work.

[ and so on]

Googling for "karl wiedemer" produces four other pages, all in
German, one on safety devices for coal dust, one on blast furnace
slag, one on the history of some club from 1896, and two other in
pdf format that Google does not offer to translate.

Spoke-squeezing is an intriguingly mysterious subject to research.
I remain agnostic, wavering one way and the other, but haven't seen
any experimental data or analyses involving bicycle spokes. If you
have the 3rd edition, perhaps you could peek at the Wiedemer stuff
and give me your thoughts on it?

I had the pleasure of meeting Professor Wiedemer a week ago and
reliving old stories of machine design and engineering, which we both
enjoyed immensely. Besides mechanical engineering he is a mathematics
and astronomy enthusiast who at 80 is still active in science. Stress
relieving was obvious to him and he was happy to have been a reference
in "the Bicycle Wheel". His treatment of stresses in a tensioned wire
spoked wheel had not gotten much attention, having been published in a
journal with little distribution and not to the bicycle industry.

It was my first opportunity to meet him because he lives in Siegen
Germany where I don't often pass except in the high speed train that
runs past there on its way between Frankfurt and Cologne non-stop.

Stop quibbling about stress relief. Just because Old Crow (or what's
his name anyway) raised a smoke screen about it, doesn't mean you
can't use your intelligence to see that a tensile element, when
stretched, cannot exceed the yield stress so that elements that are
already at high stress yield until all parts reach that stress
(uniformly by definition) before being relaxed to a lower level
defined by the cross section and spoke tension... aka stress relief.

I would like to know what is so mysterious about that. If you can
explain that I may be able to reword my explanation to be more
obvious.

Thanks,

Jobst Brandt

On Fri, 30 Jul 2004 12:59:22 -0600, wrote:

Sheldon Brown, for example, quotes Jobst, but gives the
spokes a twist with a smooth crank arm instead of squeezing
them:

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/wheelbuild.html#seating

It would be interesting to find out if Japanese Keirin
bicycle mechanics squeeze or twist spokes. Maybe John Dacey
knows?

Sorry, I don't know. I _do_ know that a US parts distributor had some
track wheels (Shimano large flange hubs, 36x36 Araya 16B rims, 1.8 mm
elliptical spokes, 4X) they used to sell that were built by what they
described as a "Keirin-certified wheelbuilder" in Japan. The wheels
were tied & soldered, but I don't know whether that, the number of
spoke crossings, or any other practices are a requirement for such
certification.

Maybe "mechanicals" like rolled tires and broken spokes are kept to a
minimum in Keirin because the one responsible would be expected to
take the "Honourable Solution" for his error. As such, the occupation
of wheelbuilder would take on something of a self-selecting nature,
practiced (for any length of time) only by those who've also
discovered the secrets of stress relief.

-------------------------------
John Dacey
Business Cycles, Miami, Florida
Since 1983
Our catalogue of track equipment: online since 1996.
http://www.businesscycles.com

Jeff Napier wrote in message ...
You'll find a reasonable tutorial on the basics of wheel alignment and
wheelbuilding at www.bikewebsite.com
Have fun!
- Jeff -


GRRRRRRRRRRR