Winter Wheelset Part One: Studding Tires

My interest in amateur wheel building actually stemmed from a modest attempt at retrofitting a clunky, too-small mountain bike as an All-American winter beater on a budget. Naturally, I came to see spending a hundred bucks on carbide studded tires at my LBS as a breach of my liberties, and so I set out to drive pan-headed sheet metal screws through my Continental Travel Contacts (rather ironically, the newest componentry of the poor old MTB).

A few rules of thumb present for studding tires. One mustn't use screws too lengthy, but they of course must be long enough to protrude from the treads--perhaps by half a centimeter. There ought be more studs on the front wheel than the rear, where load and therefore friction wane. The patterning of the studs must repeat periodically such that a full revolution of the pattern around the wheel ends where it began. 

The resolution of these simple considerations will depend on the tread pattern of a particular tire. Have a gander at my solution, which employs 44 and 88 studs on the rear and front wheels, respectively:

Studding patterns are shown for the rear wheel (44 studs) 
and front wheel (88 studs) [click to enlarge]

The treading followed an ABBABB pattern on each side of each tire, with A being a slightly larger polygon-shaped tread than B. The front wheel was studded (as indicated with red text) as ABBABBABBABB, and the rear wheel likewise as ABBABBABBABB. Thus, twice as many studs were used to complete the pattern around the front wheel. Given the option, use treads at the tire's edge to prevent undue rolling resistance.

As it happens, the local hardware store didn't stock the 1/4 inch pan-heads I originally sought, but having gone with 3/8 inch, I am glad in retrospect. The protrusion is more than one would expect from a typical manufactured studded tire, but as they wear down a bit and recess back into the treads, I expect they will maintain their bite quite nicely.

After settling on patterning and count, but before screwing each stud in by hand, holes were drilled through the appropriate treads against a slab of wood to catch the drill bit. This is vital for uniform stud orientation and can be tiring on the hands, depending on the rigidity of the tire. I suggest taking breaks working through this prep work. Better to prolong the process than sully your hard work with a poorly drilled pilot hole.

Finally, the inner tube must be shielded from the screw heads inside the tire. Tire liner may be acquired for flat prevention in a more general sense, but I found the liner too thin and narrow to adequately cover the screw heads. I widened it with Gorilla brand tape to accommodate the spacing.

Tuffy Tire Liner was reinforced and widened with Gorilla Tape

Having commuted for the last month or so with my homemade studded tires, I am quite happy with the results. So far there is little sign of wear (a worry when foregoing carbide studs), and I've yet to have a real fall. The unbearable rolling resistance I anticipated is not nearly as bad as one might expect.

Up next: I attempt to stripe my spokes red and white to compliment the spangled banner that is my steel, blue MTB frame. The results are a mix of shitty craftsmanship and rugged individualism.

-WGM

"Seriousness, young man, is an accident of time. It consists, I don't mind telling you in confidence, in putting too high a value on time. I, too, once put too high a value on time. For that reason, I wished to be a hundred years old. In eternity, however, there is no time, you see. Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke."

A Brief Discussion of The Bicycle Wheel by Jobst Brandt

There comes a time in any fledgling wheel crafter's early research when Jobst Brandt's The Bicycle Wheel surfaces as an indisputably necessary read. I committed to its entirety prior even to attempting my first wheel truing--a wholly unnecessary and worthwhile imposition. I keep it handy during many projects and recommend it highly.

To be sure, Brandt's classic and its loyal endorsers aren't without their shortcomings. Promises of well-established science are delivered as a myriad of engineering results to be taken at face value. Coupled with Brandt's occasionally flippant take on less-than-conventional techniques, I finished the first half of the book ("Theory of the Spoked Wheel") with the impression that it is best to take him at his word. One can hardly be blamed in doing so--Brandt is an esteemed industry man who speaks with more clout on the subject than perhaps anyone. Still, the intellectually curious reader is left hungry for more rigorous explanation and less appeal to authority. Whatever thorough academic work exists on the subject, The Bicycle Wheel can't promise much more than footnotes. Its saving grace is perhaps that many people desire just that, though I found it quite mundane in this regard.

That's not true, actually--its saving grace is the second half of the book ("Building and Repairing Wheels"). Here, Brandt takes the reader through every step of your standard wheel-building effort, from selecting components to lacing, tensioning, truing, and stress relieving. All the YouTube videos you can tolerate aren't as helpful as this little guide when your hands are covered in oil and dirt.

Brandt concludes his treatise with an appendix of sorts that might be mistaken at first blush as the in-depth engineering pedagogy I admonished him for omitting earlier. A discussion of spoke-strength experiments does quell the reader a bit in this regard, but from there on lies a barrage of equations and computational analysis that again leaves the reader with nothing earned in the way of understanding. We are reminded once again that Brandt knows best, and while only a fool would bet against his conclusions, this fool wants to know more.

-WGM

"To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge."

Introduction

Hi there. My name is Wyatt, and I am novice enthusiast in the pastime of bicycle wheel fabrication. I intend to document my wheel building trials, mostly for the sake of posterity and poor memory, but perhaps you will find some value in surveying my efforts.

I am calling this project "Rigid Rotor Wheels" as an unsubtle homage to my first love--physical chemistry. Perhaps with enough experience and audacity this will develop into a brand name of sorts, but for now it's just a blog title.

At the time of writing, I have no particular layout or schedule in mind. I hope to provide helpful advice and thorough documentation of my builds with a few pleasing visuals along the way.

You can read about my exploits as a physical chemist here, if you wish.

-WGM

"His tendency is to explain Mozart's perfect being, just as a schoolmaster would, as a supreme and special gift rather than as the outcome of his immense powers of surrender and suffering, of his indifference to the ideals of the bourgeois, and of his patience under that last extremity of loneliness which rarefies the atmosphere of the bourgeois world to an ice-cold ether, around those who suffer to become men, that loneliness of the Garden of Gethsemane."