I'd have to agree about spokes in compression and I'm sure Pino eventually came to this conclusion as well as the later incarnations of his wheels had spokes that were .125".
<classicrendezvous@bikelist.org> Sent: Tuesday, November 22, 2005 7:53 PM Subject: RE: [CR]Re: "Pino" wheels - Now: the tri-nutted version
>
> John Jorgensen wrote:
>>
>> Pino did boast that his earlier wheels could be ridden down
>> stairs though.
>
> Hmm, are there wheels that can't be ridden down stairs?
>
> I have ridden plenty of wheels down stairs - "courthouse" or campus
> stairs anyway. Never heard of a wheel that couldn't take it, given
> reasonable rim weight and spoke count for the rider's weight. For
> instance I rode 36 spoke Arc En Ciel rims with normal tubulars down such
> stairs when I weighed ~175 lb. I wouldn't have tried that with my
> Medaille d'Or rims, but a lighter rider could. (Some skill required)
>
> The tire is usually what determines how steep a stair you can ride down,
> how fast - pinch flats will happen long before the wheel collapses,
> again for any reasonably built wheel.
>
> While I too admired Pino's inventiveness, I am skeptical of using wires
> as compression members*, and take the marketing comments as just that.
>
> *Aside from the compression effect you get by decreasing the tension on
> a pre-tensioned spoke - that is real. I mean pushing on a spoke that
> has no tension left, which is what those Pino spoke nuts are about. I
> think they are nuts!
>
> Mark Bulgier
> Seattle WA USA
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