The Modern Safety Bicycle by Herbert Alfred Garratt

Author:Herbert Alfred Garratt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Whittaker & co.
Published: 1899-03-25T05:00:00+00:00

WHEELS

Apart from the hub, a wheel consists of^^poke^ a rim, and a tyre. We will deal with these in tEe present chapter, beginning with the spokes.

Spokes. In old days the spokes were radial, being screwed into the hub-flange, and headed or nippled into the rim. This method was very unsatisfactory from the rider's point of view, as the spokes frequently broke oflF at the hub end, leaving the screwed portion buried in the hub-flange. To get this removed, a small hole had to be drilled down the centre of the broken piece of spoke, and a square tapered piece of steel, made out of a bradawl, driven into the hole. On turning this round the end of the spoke could usually be screwed out. The worst of it was, that most repairers were either not sufiiciently patient or sufiiciently skilful to perform this operation successfully, and consequently the hub-flange was often damaged so that a new spoke of the same size would not screw in properly. Fortunately the drilling out of spoke ends is now a thing of the past.

Another objection to the radial spoke was that it transmitted the force from the hub to the rim by shearing and bending, instead of by a direct pull. This is a serious

VI.]

WHEELS

109

drawback in a driving-wheel, though of no consequence in any other wheel, unless a powerful brake be used upon it. A simple running-wheel, that has to carry weight only, should, of course, have radial spokes, and consequently some makers continued to use radial spokes in their front wheels, after they had adopted tangent spokes in their driving-wheels. There was some sense in this arrangement, but the greater ease with which tangent spokes can be connected to the hub has gradually driven the radial

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