Berd Spokes: We answer your questions!
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- Опубликовано: 6 авг 2024
- We asked you to submit questions on what you want to know about the space-aged string spokes: Berd Polylight spokes (@berdspokes).
Tristan answers your questions about these Ultra High Molecular Weight Polyethylene (UHMWPE) spokes and talks about some of their unique properties.
If you want to learn more, go to our Berd's nest here:
www.wheelworks.co.nz/berd-spo...
or flick us a comment below!
0:11 Hub Compatibility
1:02 Spoke Twist During Build
1:40 Ride Feel
3:46 Knitting
4:23 Use With Alloy Rims
5:28 Durability
Wow, nice video!
By far one of the best Berd spokes videos I've seen till now
Please keep on making great wheel building content ! 🙂
Ps. I'd personally love to see a Onyx deep dive, kinda like the videos you made on DT's hubs, those were awesome 👏
I love a good deepdive :-) Thanks for the positive comments -Tristan
incredibly informative,this is such an incredible channel for deeper dives into wheel building. id love to see an in depth analysis of the onyx hubs, im seriously considering them for my alloy hardtail, and id love like a deep dive like your dt swiss video.
Great suggestion!
These would be great with 1)steel rims, for better compliance and durability than carbon, the weight should be mitigated by the virtually weightless cord spokes. 2)electric hub wheels, lots of compliance to protect the motor, which is great because hub driven bikes should be hardtails anyway, otherwise the wheel flys everywhere on the swing arm like grandpa jogging without a jockstrap. They are the lightest spokes on the market, regardless of the compliance, not anymore expensive than anything else if you lace the wheel yourself, and Berd is a solid American company.
Your informative videos like this are superb!
Thanks Pan! -Tristan
Informative video, thanks for putting this together.
Awesome - glad it's useful! -Tristan
Great video! Thanks for sharing.
I've found a drip of wax based dry chain lube (Smoove, Squirt, etc) at the cross and at the flanges helps with the abrasion you mentioned in the video.
Thanks for sharing!
Technically pretty cool stuff and to me the main niche is to make super light, complaint wheels with carbon rims. But...
For an enduro wheel you save about 100 g rotating mass by picking carbon instead of Al, (Newman A.30 is 556 g in Al and 456 g in carbon). But overall, you have to add the thick DH tires + sealant, which weigh around 1400 g and adding up everything you'll face ca. 2000 g going with Al and 1900 g with carbon, i.e. you save around 5% ... if I also factor in the spoke weight (steel 7g vs UHMWPE 2.5g) it's another 100 g, so about 10% (assuming they would weigh in as badly as the rim and tire, which they don't because their mass is closer to the center of the wheel, but anyway).
So by spending 700€ for carbon rim + berd spokes VS. 80€ for Al + steel you save about 10% rotating mass. Definitely a dentist-kind of investment 😅.
And what they also don't tell you is UHMWPE is prone to aging, especially UV exposure with a bit of humidity and oxygen. The DAV tested slings (climbing equipment) made from UHMWPE and found that within 3-5 years they became unsafe. Nylon slings were 100% safe after that time. Steel doesn't age.
Not really
I got dyneema spokes(not berds) on DH carbon rims and my wheels are laterally stiffer than aluminium ones. But with much more dampening + no trueing at all at a comparable weight
It’s only more expensive
Ps I use 2.5mm spokes (I think berds are thinner) so the whole not stiff argument is not based on the material but on berds being thin
Thank you for The info. Are we able to twist these spokes ? One turn/twist.
Do we loose peddling power as they are 3x more flexing ?
Great video. Is there anything else to consider regarding lacing patterns with Berd spokes...and on that point I'd love to see a video on spoke patterns: straight V 2 cross V 3 cross
I don't think there is anything specific about Berd lacing patterns - we use the same pattern as we'd use with a steel spoke. Thanks for the comment and the suggestion on a lacing pattern video! -Tristan
Great info!! Will this spoke be good for building a climbing roadbike carbon wheelset??
absolutely! These are super light and work really well for a super light climbing bike
Waiting to get a wheel build back from my lbs. have you seen a lot of issues with durability with berd spokes?
I plan to lace berd spokes to an I9 hub.
Would it make sense to pre-stretch some spokes for faster replacements? What kind of setup/weighting would be needed (eg. hang a weight, or lace into an identical wheel)? How long would they need to be under tension? Once stretched, could they then be packed for a trip, or would they "unstretch"?
You'd need around 100kg for 3 days. The tricky bit of the stretch is "creep", which once has been set doesn't return. Could be worth doing if you wanted the easiest drop in replacement.
Good thinking @thetart20 - ps I love the Westfield -TT
Great Q&A, just wonder if road bike can use these spokes?
Yep, no problem! They produce a very light, very smooth-riding road wheel, but they won't be as aero as a modern bladed steel spoke. We tend to build light weight climbing wheels using the Berd spoke, but "do all" wheels tend to use the bladed steel Aerolites. -Tristan
@@WheelworksHandcraftedWheels Well noted, thanks for your feedback, so I think i shd go for blade spokes instead.
When it comes to the spokes getting dirty do they clean up okey after a dirty ride or do they tend to go brown?
Brown
They certainly go a grey/brown colour after some muddy rides but it's not a colour which looks "dirty" it just doesn't blind you with whiteness like the new spokes do. -Tristan
There is an interesting conversation (I think) on the Park Tool channel regarding interlacing, and the effect it has on a wheel. Would be cool to hear your input!
Funnily enough I've been thinking a lot about this topic recently and wondering why we interlace spokes in the modern world. I heard that Park conversation but it wasn't especially technical. I've been thinking about how I can test and quantify the interlacing... Stay tuned and get subscribed 😅 -Tristan
Sounds like a great plan. Seems that the difference won't be small. I will subscribe, Thanks@@WheelworksHandcraftedWheels
i know this isnt likely, but can you use a dynamo hub with berd spokes? something like a SON dynamo
Great question...i can't see any reason why not. We've got a new system for preparing J-bend hubs and it should work really well on a SON dynamo -Tristan
hey could you compare a bird spoke wheelset with a pirope wheelset?
We haven't had much experience with pirope spokes but this is a great idea -Tristan
@@WheelworksHandcraftedWheels i´d be happy to see that video. Since almost 2 years now i´ve been riding a set of piropes.and im intressted to see how the are diffrent to the birds.
I built, and have ridden for a few hundred miles, a rear MTB wheel with UHMWPE (what Berd uses) on one side and Vectran (what Pi Rope use) on the other. There's very little between the two materials - any differences I noticed were at the build stage (rather than riding), and related to the construction type (12 vs 8 strand) and post-manufacture treatment as opposed to the material itself.
I hear berd are scared of scissors!
Bicycle industry reached a point where there is too much voodoo. Carbon wheels got damaged to easily so they added more carbon making them the same weight as alloy wheels. Carbon wheels were too stiff so they added more compliance with spokes and/or rim design. So the final result is that most carbon wheels have very similar feeling to alloy wheels. Just for 5 times more money. Another argument in favor of carbon wheels is that you don't have to true them, and you need to true alloy is also invalid. A WELL laced alloy wheel will have exactly the same feature. The difference is that carbon will fail catastrophically in the case of hard hit. Aluminium will bend and you'll be able to roll home. And last but not least the "crash replacement". First of. Will the company replace my rim on the spot? No. Second. Is it healthy for the environment to replace carbon with carbon indefinitely? No. You want excellent wheels go with EX511 or FR541. Lace them well and they'll be wonderful for fraction of carbon set.
Wow, ok, lots to unpack here.
First up - we build and sell wheels with both aluminium and carbon rims. Each have their own pros and cons, and each can be good or bad depending on the components used and the way they're built.
We find our Flite carbon rims to be *significantly* more robust than aluminium rims for most use-cases. They're also lighter and wider. This comes at a cost and they're about twice the price of an aluminium wheelset.
Our carbon rims are extremely unlikely to fail catastrophically to the point where you can't ride home. We've never had this happen. Generally speaking the rim will continue to hold tubeless pressure but can always be ridden - Tom Bradshaw even did 3 days of heli shuttling on a cracked Version 2 rim without issues. This increased robustness and durability is why we have a lifetime warranty on our carbon rims, and why customers rarely need to use it. We're unable to offer this on aluminium rims, even the really good ones.
The environmental impact of the two rim materials is very complicated to understand and compare. This is something we've tried doing a number of times however it's incredibly complicated.
The two rim materials are less about "good" and "bad" and more about suitability for certain riders and bikes :-)
-Tristan
@@WheelworksHandcraftedWheels Although understandably overly complex, do you have any videos or reports about the environmental analysis comparing carbon and alloy for those of us outside of the industry to attempt to glean an understanding?
@@philhunt1442 no, I don't. I've scratched the surface on this a few times but it's a incredibly complex to understand the environmental impact of any given product - especially a category of products like "carbon rims" where there will be significant differences between a good manufacturing chain and a bad one, and a significant difference in product lifespan. This sort of work is being successfully done in clothing manufacture where the garments are produced in higher volumes and with less inputs and sub-components, but as far as I can tell it's still a long way off for more complex products and for smaller companies.
Shimano seem to be taking environmental impact seriously and have reduced the amount of plastic in their packaging. Other companies could learn a lot from this one small action.
I'd like to think we're doing a reasonably good job by simply designing and building wheels which last, and which are serviceable. The longer we can keep a wheel on a bike and out of landfill the better. This seems to be a very simple way of looking at things and glosses over many of the subtleties, however as a core value I think it's important.
Does that answer your question?
-Tristan
Sounds like you ought to stick to alloy and let the rest of enjoy our carbon. Good luck try to convince people there is no difference in performance.
There is no argument when it comes to the environmental impact of carbon VS aluminum. You can recycle aluminum almost indefinitely. You can recycle carbon MAYBE once. You can make an aluminum wheel from recycled aluminum. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone making carbon fibre anything out of recycled plastic.
Carbon Fibre is an incredible material, but the fact is, it's plastic. It's in our blood and our water now because it never biodegrades.