Between 88-92 or so when I used to get the Bicycling magazine (back in the day before the corporate advertising twisted their views...just an opinion, no threads please!) there was an article about a bamboo bike and also I remember seeing one made from paper fibers. Interesting concept but I never saw anything beyond those days. But I remember how bicycling joked about the bike and what would happen if it rained.
Walt S
Falls Creek, Pa ------------------------------------------
------------------------------------------
>From: Brandon Ives
>To: "Moos, Jerry"
>CC: Aldo Ross , Classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
>Subject: [CR]Re: Bike Materials [was] Titanium rims on eBay
>Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2001 13:50:34 -0500 (EST)
>
>Bamboo is the wonder material of the next decade, and last century. If
>you've read William Gibson "Virtual Light" there's a lot of talk about
>paper bikes, yea it maybe a cyberpunk novel but I've heard of someone
>actually building one back in '72 or so. Speaking of steel cranks I'm a
>big fan of Bullseyes since I've never found anything stiffer and they've
>hardly changed since their inception in around '78, plus they're
>actually pretty light. My current Bullseyes
>on my Lotus fixed were from this time period and though they were covered
>in rust when I found them, a good sandblasting and repaint and they're
>good
>as new. Smart design is where you find it.
>
>enjoy,
>Brandon"monkeyman"Ives
>
>"Nobody can do everything, but if everybody did something everything would
>get done." Gil Scott-Heron
>
>On Mon, 23 Apr 2001, Moos, Jerry wrote:
>
> > Seems that at the time various companies were trying to trying to make just
> > about every bike component from titanium. Some of them make sense, rims did
> > not. I hesitate to mention engineering professors after the recent
> > rotational inertia thread, but I remember one of my profs commenting that if
> > steel were suddenly invented today, it would be hailed as a high-tech wonder
> > material. Alloy steel really is pretty remarkable stuff, although aluminum
> > and titanium have displaced steel in a lot of components in bikes and
> > elsewhere since the 50's. Seems people always look for places to use the
> > latest materials, with the sensible applications enduring and the others
> > like titanium rims becoming collectors items. I think the ultimate dumb
> > idea in materials for bikes, and therefore maybe the ultimate collectors
> > item, would be the Original All-Plastic Bike someone tried to push in the
> > 70's. This was evidently mostly a scam to bilk investors, but someone on
> > the list, I think maybe it was Sheldon, confirmed that at least one was made
> > as he saw it up close at a bike trade show. It would be really neat to have
> > that baby, though it was probably totally unrideable. BTW speaking of other
> > materials replacing steel, how many old steel crankarms ever broke? I'll
> > bet steel crank failures were a lot rarer than the alloy crank failures like
> > the ones on the web site someone posted a link to. If steel were invented
> > today, its manufacturers might try to lobby the CPSC to outlaw those
> > "dangerous" alloy cranks in favor of "safe" steel ones.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Jerry "former member of the United Steelworkers union (many years ago)" Moos
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Brandon Ives [mailto:monkey37@bluemarble.net]
> > Sent: Monday, April 23, 2001 1:30 PM
> > To: Aldo Ross
> > Cc: Classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
> > Subject: Re: [CR]Titanium rims on eBay
> >
> >
> > I had a pair as wheels in @'91 and they were really soft. You could
> > actually feel it while riding and cornering hard and they were built up
> > really tight. Not all that
> > light that I remember, but really cool. The pair I had dented really
> > easily. Rims really
> > aren't a great application for Titanium since the ratio of stiffness,
> > stength, and weight aren't better than aluminum in this
> > application. Let's just say that if they were better than aluminum you'd
> > see more Ti rims. Please let's not turn
> > this into a technical argument. Anyway, these would be a good idea for a
> > show bike, but I wouldn't put a lot of miles on them. With that said if
> > the price doesn't go too high I may bid on them since I'm a real
> > retro-techno-wheenie and things like this make me drool.
> > enjoy,
> > Brandon"monkeyman"Ives
> > "Nobody can do everything, but if everybody did something everything would
> > get done." Gil Scott-Heron
> >
> > On Mon, 23 Apr 2001, Aldo Ross wrote:
> >
> > > Here's something I don't remember seeing before - Araya Titanium rims:
> > >
> > > http://ebay.com/
> > >
> > > Anyone have experience with these?
> > >
> > > Aldo Ross
> > >
> > >
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