On Mon, 25 Jun 2007 12:26:32 -0500, DougC <[email hidden]>
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:The solid tire was the high-quality red-rubber version and originally
tightened onto the rim a core wire at the splice, but it's shrunk
enough to leave a huge tire-splice gap at about 11 o'clock.
Every fourth spokes, you'll see a wire holding the tire to the rim:
http://www.tampere.fi/kuvat/5mv0TWCr7/velomania_isop_det.jpg
.....
Do we have any evidence that the wires tying the tire on now were
actually used when the bike was new?
It looks like perhaps something that may have been done for display
purposes, considering that the original tire was no longer supple enough
to mount normally.
~
Dear Doug,
I suppose that the museum might have put twenty or so wire loops on
the tire to hold it in place for display purposes, but it seems
unlikely--the two wires at the tire splice would have held it in
place. Or even a zip tie or two.
Note that most (but not all) of the wires have shifted around until
they fetched up against a spoke, always in the same direction, counter
clockwise in this view, which is the way that constant acceleration
would drag them. (A few remain in the middle between two spokes, and
the two at the splice are a special case.)
Note the two tire-wires on the upper right of the small rear wheel.
They look battered, not like something added long after the bike was
no longer being ridden.
Note on the large wheel how some wires are digging into the rubber
quite noticeably, while others don't--this looks like the effects of
either deterioration over the years, riding causing different wear
rates, or someone twisting some wires tighter than a museum worker
concerned only with keeping a display neat.
Loose highwheeler tires were indeed wired in practice. Karl Kron
mentions using some fine wire just to tie loose splice ends down:
"I may as well say here that I have driven my second set of tires
4,700 miles, and that I think that at least another 1,000 miles will
be required to 'pound them to rags.' The splice in the big tire worked
loose in this second set, just as the splice in the little one worked
loose in the first, though not until I had driven it some 2,500 miles,
or more than ten times as far as in the first case. After two or three
unsatisfactory experiments with cement, I had the loose end of the
splice sewed down with fine wire; and this improvement lasted for 500
miles, or until the tip of the splice broke off."
--"Ten Thousand Miles on a Bicycle," Karl Kron, p. 37-8
In fact, Kron used string instead of the heavy wire seen in the museum
picture:
"On the following day the little tire worked loose, for the first time
in its history; and, for the first time in my experience, I made use
of cemnent in re-setting it. I was obliged to ride ten miles before
reaching the cement, however, and as the tire had been literally worn
to shreds, and as my supply of string was rather limited, the tattered
india-rubber would occasionally bulge out from the im far enough to
strike the fork, and thus call my attention to its sad condition. In
the large tire, also, an indentation, at the point where the two ends
had been worn away [the splice gap], caused a definite jar at each
revolution of the wheel during the last 600 miles."
--"Ten THousand Miles on a Bicycle," Karl Kron, p. 47
Kron rode a small 46-inch highwheeler, so his Pope cyclometer ticked
over roughly every 144 inches, a jar every 12 feet, or 264,000 jars in
that 600 miles. That many bumps wears a noticeable hole in even a tiny
gap where the tire ends meet.
Cheers,
Carl Fogel
