Ye Olde Tool Board

I found myself rooting through the archives and chanced on a picture from the very early days of Wheelsmith on Alma St. in Palo Alto. It was a shot of our tool board. On it hung our Campagnolo kit (old timers know about these) and our various Var, Eldi, Hozan, and home made tools.

circa 1975

Across the top are beer bottles, collected from exotic locations. Believe it or not, in 1975 you couldn't walk into any grocery and find foreign, artisan, or exotic beer. You had to go there.

You can see an aluminum version of the Jobst Brandt's tension gauge (that is currently available from FSA -- buy it here!). I still have the wood tool box in the foreground. Got it at a garage sale on Addison St. (not far from the famed garage of Bill and David of HP fame).

You'll be surprise which item I most miss: the framed picture at the left. It's a frowning gorilla with an parrot on his head. Somehow it was meaningful. The self absorbed, highly evolved gorilla is a contrast with the bird. We needed that levity because we were always trying much too hard. Perfectionism is a vice, and a selfish one at that. The little picture was actually hinged at its top. If you lifted it up, you could access a hole in the tool board and reach our light switch. So it was.

The framed picture is the tool board's center, so this shot is only the right half.

The shop had no heating or plumbing. Bathroom was next door in Sierra Designs (their second location after Berkeley). If they weren't open, it was the woods around the Southern Pacific (now Caltrain) tracks across the street. Lesson: once you are used to such inconveniences (long underwear in winter), it becomes easy. We stayed 10 years.

The next image is Bridgestone Bicycle's 1994 catalog cover.

Pineapple Bob & friend

By 1994, that tool board had moved three times within Palo Alto's downtown. You can see some items have changed places and I'm sorry you still can't see the left side. Those medieval Var tools were so good to look at -- the cotter press, for example. No wonder we kept them on display rather than in drawers.

Cast iron cotter pin press.

In fairness, much of that tool board's completeness was owed to Hugh Enochs, the legendary Bay Area framebuilder. He began at Velosport in Berkeley, learned his craft in Italy from Cinelli and developed a frame business contemporary with Albert Eisentraut. Hugh, who lived a hippie-style life in La Honda, shared our rent (1/3 of our 1,000 sq ft) and many of the tools were his. We eventually bought them from him. Our businesses developed and parted, but the images remain.

So there you have my Tuesday epiphany. Serves me right for digging around in the "attic"...

Great Ghisallo Press

It's always a thrill to be mentioned in a hugely popular publication. In cycling, there are few, and Bicycling is the industry standard. They're the oldest, biggest, most successful, and enjoy the broadest following of them all. If you're not already a subscriber, go out right now and buy the July (2009) issue!

On pages 64 and 65 you'll see Ghisallo rims on a very stylish and retro Bianchi road bike. This intriguing idea, by test editor Matt Phillips, is just one of many tasty items in the current issue.

Photo ©: Bicycling Magazine

On the following page is this brief description of the rims:

Photo ©: Bicycling Magazine

Big thanks, Matt, on behalf of Ghisallo rims, the Cermenati family, and myself.

Wheel Building Tip No. 2 - Lubricating Nipples

[Note: this is #2 in a series of tips to be published during 2009.]

Lubricate your nipples. Yes, yes, you've heard this advice before...maybe back when you were a runner? Seriously, it sounds simple but deserves emphasis. Why does it matter and what is the science behind this practice? What are the practical benefits and what are some effective means to lube nipples?

It's worth asking, to begin the discussion, why this lubrication is not universal? Seems simple, why doesn't everyone already do it? There are actually several good reasons, besides inexperience, that some builders (especially mass producers) continue to build dry.

(1) Brass, the most common nipple material, has a self lubricating property and is remarkably smooth turning. This low coefficient of friction against steel and aluminum means you can almost skip lubrication in the threads.

(2) Corrosion resistance of brass is also quite good, which explains why it is used for so many nautical fittings. While not equivalent to stainless materials, this resistance makes lubrication less important.

(3) Nipples become cemented in place by the corrosion that eventually occurs with dry brass nipples, which helps stabilize a wheel against vibration induced loosening. Trouble turning nipples means difficult re-truing but freedom from loosening is a valuable benefit.

(4) A dry nipple reaches a point where no further turning is possible, the combination of thread and rim friction becomes too much. This acts as a handy signal to the builder to stop tightening and simply finish the wheel. No tension gauge needed. Conveniently for mass producers, the signal comes early at lower tension than conscientious builders prefer.

Well, none of those factors apply to us. We all seek high optimal tension for maximum wheel stiffness and longevity. Right?

Lubricating nipples should focus on the nipple to rim contact, not the threads. The former produces much more friction than the threads. Thread friction is, however, still important especially because it can cause a spoke to wind up. Wind up confuses the builder, masking the precise magnitudes of adjustments. It also stresses the spoke at the threads, a weakness best to avoid. Light oil is the best all around lubrication for these parts although I've heard builders use a grease stick on rims prior to building. I'm a big fan of pin point oilers. Here are a couple near my truing stand. These can be bought at many hardware stores. Find one you like and use it!

Handy oilers.

Many builders like coating spokes with a Teflon material like SpokePrep, that lubricates the threads and has other benefits. While I'm fond of the practice (having created SpokePrep some years back), I've become lazy in recent years. Supervising off shore wheel building always reminds me to avoid processes that are hard to teach and monitor. SpokePrep and other coatings don't work well in large wheel workshops. My conclusion is to lube threads early in a wheels assembly and, when finished, to use a wicking Loctite. I prefer 220 (blue, NOT 222) for this. But more on thread compounds later.

Bike racing equipment regulations

The UCI has announced an offensive against equipment makers who are exploiting (legally) the current rules. The topic of sports regulation is always hot, especially in these days of doping and cheating. Recently, the New York Times ran a conspicuous article on the subject.

What are the UCI's concerns? Their minds aren't transparent, but we doubt they are anti-innovation, per se. One trend that concerns them is the extreme evolution of composite TT bikes minimizing wind resistance. Twelve years ago, they were expensive.

Nearly $5K of TT bicycle.

Today, they're massively more developed:

Photo ©: James Huang/Cyclingnews.com

What do you suppose this machine costs? I guess $20-30K. Specialized claims their head tube nose cone is not an illegal fairing (it's a steering tube and anchors the front brake), therefore it shouldn't be limited to the 3:1 aspect ratio of the rules. Hmm...

Specialized is a leader but by no means alone. Cervelo, Scott, Trek, Felt, BMC and many others are on the same F-1 track. By that I mean equipment priorities that more so resembles F-1 auto racing than cycling of the last century. Of course, who can blame them? The stakes are high, they have the skills, and the rules can be bent.

This topic will not fade in years to come and the discussions will continue. At the New York Times, a forum is considering the topic with celebrity athletes and experts weighing in. I'm humbled to be included, check my recent comments (limited to 300 words...).

As you can tell, I fear for the UCI. As any sports governing body (or government), they can be possessed with lofty values and become insulated from the real world. They're capable of (but not doomed to) self destruction. In the case of these equipment rules, the TT bike runaway development should be slowed down. But the great risk for the UCI is precipitous action that will destabilize the recent, very favorable relationship between equipment suppliers and elite racing. Corporate sponsorship, lately in the hands of multi-nationals, has fallen off and bicycle makers have upped their commitments. They don't deserve punishment.

Wheel Building Tip No. 1 - Turning Nipples

[Note: this is #1 in a series of tips to be published during 2009.]

Hexagon headed fasteners have dominated engineering for a century but bicycle wheels know better and every spoke nipple (well, 99.6%) in the world is square drive. Why? Even though square drive cannot transmit as much torque (twisting force), lower tolerances are required than with hex drive. Besides, if you plan to turn a fastener with just a two sided wrench (an open end wrench), then square drive is equivalent to hex for strength.

Since wheel building involves lots of separate adjustments and turning, it's no surprise that open ended wrenches do the bulk of work. They're easy on and off. Hence, square shaped nipples are dominant for bicycle wheels. My advice (Tip No. 1) is to use a three-sided spoke wrench whenever possible. See the difference:


Visualize each of these wrenches turning a square spoke nipple. Imagine the points of contact, the nipple being somewhat smaller than the wrench.

- The two-side wrench has two contacts. The back inside surface of the wrench cannot drive because any force against it will push the nipple away. Only the sides hit the nipple, so we have two contacts.

- The Park style (SW-40) of three-sided wrench slides onto the spoke first, then over the nipple. See how the two lips adjacent to the entry slot make it impossible for the nipple to move away from the square opening. Notice that the wrench will drive the nipple with three contacts.

- The diamond shape (DT, Spokey, Minoura, Hozan, and more make these) three-side wrench also slides over the spoke before the nipple can enter. See that the wrench makes contact in three spots and the somewhat enclosed nipple has more trouble deforming and rounding off.

The last two styles can effectively deliver twice the torque, making nipple destruction nearly obsolete. A two-side wrench is good for a seat bag toolkit, but don't depend on it for regular use.

In addition to using three-side wrenches, always lubricate the nipple-to-rim contact. Add light oil when truing an older wheel and before a new build becomes snug. Thread friction is much lower than the nipple-to-rim friction.

If you work on many types of wheels, you must have encountered splined shape nipples and wrenches. Mavic is best known for this. These spline shapes also make it easy to turn tight nipples without damage. But what about custom builds, when you're not using proprietary Mavic parts? Consider using Spline Drive nipples. Spline Drive is a conventional shaped nipple that was developed in LA in the early '90's, unfortunately a decade before its time. Unable to support a one product industry presence, they gave up. But the design is still valid.

End view.

Can you see how 6 effective driving edges for this nipple makes for a much stronger wrench-to-nipple interface?

Early spline nipples and wrenches.

As splined nipples (by a variety of makers) find their way back into the market, please welcome them. I know a number of custom builders who will switch as soon as the supply is stable. FSA, for one, is beginning to use this spline nipple shape on their standard wheels. The deciding factor for this trend is the increasing popularity of aluminum nipples. They save only a tiny amount of weight over brass nipples but they're easily colored and more in the spirit of contemporary performance cycling.

Aluminum nipples suffer because, while lighter, they're weaker than brass. They are more easily deformed in turning. Aluminum also has a higher friction coefficient, which means they turn more stiffly against a spoke or rim than brass. Thirdly, aluminum is more vulnerable to corrosion. A corroded nipple is harder to turn as the oxides act like glue, bonding the nipple to its spoke. For multiple reasons, aluminum presents trouble for torque. A three-side wrench or splined shape allow twice the torque to be transmitted. Not a trivial improvement.

So, use three-side spoke wrenches and welcome spline drive type solutions into the wheel world. Spend your valuable time optimizing component combinations and introducing uniform and appropriate spoke tensions. Spend less time struggling with stiff turning and deformed nipples.