tube valves

Quoted message said:

Any reason these can't be made out of aluminum?

Taditionaly they're brass. I would think luminoum would be a bit soft. Phil Brown

[email hidden] (charles ramsey) wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Any reason these can't be made out of aluminum?

Dear Charles,

Cost and convenience?

My guess is that valves could be made out of aluminum, simply because I have some screw-on
valve-extenders for making regular-length valves work on deep aero-rims and these seem to be
aluminium--shiny. light, non-magnetic.

They were wretched little adaptors, needing teflon plumbing tape to seal their threads. I don't
know whether the poor sealing was poor workmanship or the best that could be done with tiny
aluminum pieces.

Probably the metals used in valves are selected for low cost, fabricating convenience, durable
threads, and long-term chemical compatibility with the tiny internal rubber seals, as well as
getting along with the rubber body of the tube when fused together.

The only likely advantage of aluminum would be a tiny weight savings that would probably pale in
comparison to the weight difference between normal and thin tubes.

A quick look at Performance's tube pages shows 119 grams for their house schraeder 700 23x26, 117
grams for the same brand with presta, and 49 grams for their lunarlight presta version. Perhaps
someone can cut out a valve and toss it on an electronic postal scale?

Let's hope that Chalo Contina gives his thoughts on the matter, since he likely knows the answers.

Carl Fogel

charles ramsey said:

Any reason these can't be made out of aluminum?

They are. Michelin offers such.

--
Andrew Muzi www.yellowjersey.org Open every day since 1 April, 1971

[email hidden] (charles ramsey) wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Any reason these can't be made out of aluminum?

Dear Charles,

A providential puncture vine sticker provided a cadaver, so I excised the Presta valve, removed the
cap (you wouldn't weigh yourself wearing a helmet), and wire brushed the rubber off the base. An old
tube section with a Schraeder valve caught my eye, too, and received the same treatment.

The electronic postal scale at my first client's office this morning showed that the naked Presta
weighs 2 grams, the Schraeder 4. To be fair, the Schraeder, like me, wears a rubbery coating around
its trunk that could be lost to reduce weight.

I'm not quite sure what the metal on this Presta is. To my surprise, it's a shiny silver color,
but wire brushing the rubber off the base reveals a slightly fatter base with a groove that has a
brassy look. The tan line, so to speak, is rather sharp, so it may be a threaded piece of one
metal attached to rubber-friendly base of another metal. The long silver stem is nicely threaded
and indifferent to a magnet, whatever it's made from--aluminum, pewter, brass, stainless steel,
or whatever.

(If you hear a grinding noise, it may be Chalo Contina's teeth.)

I wonder if there's any obvious field test to tell what it's made from and why two metals are used.
I doubt that it's one of the Michelin aluminum stems that Andrew Muzi mentions, since it probably
came from WalMart years ago.

In any case, if weight savings matter on valve stems, it looks as if we're in the 1 gram
neighborhood.

We say aluminum, they say aluminium, let's call the whole thing off!

Carl Fogel

(Carl Fogel) may have said:

[email hidden] (charles ramsey) wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Any reason these can't be made out of aluminum?

[snippety-do-dah]

Quoted message said:

I'm not quite sure what the metal on this Presta is. To my surprise, it's a shiny silver color, but
wire brushing the rubber off the base reveals a slightly fatter base with a groove that has a
brassy look.

Nickel-plated brass. Very common.

Let's see, then, the weight saving from two Prestas is about 4 grams, be generous and add another
gram for the rubber sheath on the Schraders, and...by golly, the amount of weight saved is the same
as a bright, shiny new US 5-cent coin. Or, to put it in better perspective, if you take a leak
before climbing aboard, you'll save a lot more weight than that.

<mode=tongue_in_cheek>

I think we could be on to a real winning edge issue, here, yessir!

</mode>

--
My email address is antispammed; pull WEEDS if replying via e-mail. Yes, I have a killfile. If I
don't respond to something, it's also possible that I'm busy.

(charles ramsey) said:

Any reason these can't be made out of aluminum?

No, that could be done if the market justified it.

Brass has a couple of advantages over aluminum when it comes to mass-producing little threaded metal
bits that are to sell for almost no money.

First, it can be machined at insanely high speeds while delivering a good surface finish and sparing
the cutting tool from excessive wear. Tools have a very high longevity cutting brass, which cuts
clean with fairly low power, and tolerates a dull cutting edge much better than most metals.

Second, the kinds of brass that machine well (e.g. C360 free-cutting) are very cheap compared to the
kinds of aluminum that machine well
(e.g. 2011-T3).

I for one would like to see Presta valve stems machined from something strong and ductile like
stainless steel, to keep them from breaking off when inflated with a frame pump. That would be even
more expensive than aluminum and would have no weight advantage over brass, though.

Chalo Colina

(Carl Fogel) said:

To be fair, the Schraeder, like me, wears a rubbery coating around its trunk that could be lost to
reduce weight.

Very funny.

JT
*******************************************
NB: reply-to address is munged

Visit jt10000.comjt10000.comOpen ↗
*******************************************

[email hidden] (Chalo) wrote in :"]news:[email hidden]:

[snip]

Quoted message said:

I for one would like to see Presta valve stems machined from something strong and ductile like
stainless steel, to keep them from breaking off when inflated with a frame pump. That would be
even more expensive than aluminum and would have no weight advantage over brass, though.

Chalo Colina

Titanium, maybe? Pretty strong stuff, and rather expensive... But would it fit the bill for
presta valves?

[email hidden] (Chalo) wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...

[snip]

Dear Chalo,

Elsewhere in this thread, Werehatrack identifies a shiny silver Presta valve that I mentioned as
probably nickel-plated.

Why nickel-plate a brass Presta valve? Surely they didn't do it just to make me feel
stupid, did they?

Carl Fogel

Werehatrack <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...

[snip]

Quoted message said:

Nickel-plated brass. Very common.

Let's see, then, the weight saving from two Prestas is about 4 grams, be generous and add another
gram for the rubber sheath on the Schraders, and...

Dear Werehatrack,

Nickel-plated? Why'd they use the one metal that I never thought of? (I just posted the same
question to Chalo Contina in this thread, so may the best man win.)

To be fair, the original poster only asked if valves could be made from aluminum without revealing
why he asked. It's hopeless digressionists like me who leapt to the tire-diet conclusion. It may be
a light-weight question, but it's awfully fun to examine.

To niggle just a tiny point, the Presta that you've identified as nickel-plated brass weighed only 2
grams, so switching to aluminum to cut the weigh would save only . . .

Damned if I know whether brass is lighter than aluminum or how much. A quick Google search dredged
up this web page about the glories of aluminum:

aec.orgcyber alover.htmlOpen ↗

It says that aluminum weighs about one-third as much as iron, steel, copper, or brass, which (if
true) is my kind of rough-and-ready, easy-to-remember precision measurement. So a pair of vaguely
2-gram brass Prestas might reduce to a pair of 2/3 gram aluminum Prestas, if the same volume of
metal would work, giving us . . .

(Carry the one . . . No, just divide by three . . . So they weigh 4/3 grams . . . No, everyone will
see that I'm clueless if I use "two-thirds" with the metric system, so . . . Yeah, that looks really
accurate . . . There!)

. . . Not your vastly exaggerated claim of a 4-gram
weight-reduction, but a mere 2.667-gram savings!

Carl Fogel

P.S. I still long to know whether your nom-de-web signifies a tendency to turn furry and grow
antlers at the full moon--Halloween is coming, you know.

C.F.

(Carl Fogel) may have said:

Werehatrack <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...

[snip]

Quoted message said:

Nickel-plated brass. Very common.

Let's see, then, the weight saving from two Prestas is about 4 grams, be generous and add another
gram for the rubber sheath on the Schraders, and...

Dear Werehatrack,

Nickel-plated? Why'd they use the one metal that I never thought of? (I just posted the same
question to Chalo Contina in this thread, so may the best man win.)

Plating brass with nickel is just about the easiest thing that a plating shop can do. Nickel is
often used (I'm told that "always" is closer, but experience varies) as the underlay for chrome
plating as well.

Quoted message said:

To be fair, the original poster only asked if valves could be made from aluminum without revealing
why he asked. It's hopeless digressionists like me who leapt to the tire-diet conclusion. It may be
a light-weight question, but it's awfully fun to examine.

To niggle just a tiny point, the Presta that you've identified as nickel-plated brass weighed only
2 grams, so switching to aluminum to cut the weigh would save only . . .

Probably on the order of 1 1/3 gram per valve, at most, if the Presta were made of aluminum instead
of brass. Certainly not worth the effort, in my opinion, since unless a really good grade of Al was
used, they'd be even more susceptible to being snapped off than the brass ones are now. (Do I agree
with Chalo about wanting some stouter stuff in this application? You bet I do! I snapped my first
Presta clean off with a normal air hose chuck before I even had the blasted tire inflated.)

Quoted message said:

Damned if I know whether brass is lighter than aluminum or how much. A quick Google search dredged
up this web page about the glories of aluminum:

aec.orgcyber alover.htmlOpen ↗

It says that aluminum weighs about one-third as much as iron, steel, copper, or brass, which (if
true) is my kind of rough-and-ready, easy-to-remember precision measurement. So a pair of vaguely
2-gram brass Prestas might reduce to a pair of 2/3 gram aluminum Prestas, if the same volume of
metal would work, giving us . . .

(Carry the one . . . No, just divide by three . . . So they weigh 4/3 grams . . . No, everyone will
see that I'm clueless if I use "two-thirds" with the metric system, so . . . Yeah, that looks
really accurate . . . There!)

. . . Not your vastly exaggerated claim of a 4-gram
weight-reduction, but a mere 2.667-gram savings!

4 grams was for using Prestas in place of Schraders, still in brass. In the case of aluminum
Schraders, using the 1/3 figure, the weight loss is a tremendous 5.3 grams, slightly more than the
mass of a nickel. But using Al Prestas (if they exist) in place of brass Schraders, the net saving
in weight would be a stupendous 7.7 grams; definitely lightening the load here. (If the sfx for the
sarcastic tone of voice failed to come through on that, blame the ascii interface.)

Quoted message said:

Carl Fogel

P.S. I still long to know whether your nom-de-web signifies a tendency to turn furry and grow
antlers at the full moon--Halloween is coming, you know.

No, I turn into tall, skinny furniture. Or something like that. It's a long story.

--
My email address is antispammed; pull WEEDS if replying via e-mail. Yes, I have a killfile. If I
don't respond to something, it's also possible that I'm busy.

[email hidden] (Carl Fogel) wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

[email hidden] (Chalo) wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...

[snip]

Dear Chalo,

Elsewhere in this thread, Werehatrack identifies a shiny silver Presta valve that I mentioned as
probably nickel-plated.

Why nickel-plate a brass Presta valve? Surely they didn't do it just to make me feel stupid,
did they?

Carl Fogel

Yes but what about dynamic balance?

Werehatrack <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Plating brass with nickel is just about the easiest thing that a plating shop can do. Nickel is
often used (I'm told that "always" is closer, but experience varies) as the underlay for chrome
plating as well.

Dear Werehatrack,

Sorry, but your excellent answer about nickel-plating being easiest mistakenly assumes that I'm
bright enough to know why we're nickel-plating the brass in the first place (a question that I
didn't make clear).

Is it to prevent corrosion? To look shiny? Something else?

My plain brass Prestas don't seem to be turning green (maybe that's copper or bronze, not brass),
but perhaps I'm protected by the dry weather here in southern Colorado.

Carl Fogel

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

P.S. I still long to know whether your nom-de-web signifies a tendency to turn furry and grow
antlers at the full moon--Halloween is coming, you know.

No, I turn into tall, skinny furniture. Or something like that. It's a long story.

P.S. So I'm just supposed to take the word of a potential were-moose that he's a harmless piece of
furniture? Sorry, I've seen too many Hammer films to fall for that line from Christopher Lee
and his ilk. Ambrose Bierce has got your number:

WEREWOLF, n. A wolf that was once, or is sometimes, a man. All werewolves are of evil disposition,
having assumed a bestial form to gratify a bestial appetite, but some, transformed by sorcery, are
as humane as is consistent with an acquired taste for human flesh.

C.F.

(Carl Fogel) may have said:

Werehatrack <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

Plating brass with nickel is just about the easiest thing that a plating shop can do. Nickel is
often used (I'm told that "always" is closer, but experience varies) as the underlay for chrome
plating as well.

Dear Werehatrack,

Sorry, but your excellent answer about nickel-plating being easiest mistakenly assumes that I'm
bright enough to know why we're nickel-plating the brass in the first place (a question that I
didn't make clear).

Is it to prevent corrosion? To look shiny? Something else?

Mostly for appearance in my opinion, but the person who wrote the spec for the product would be the
only one who could say for sure. Nickel plate on bras only slightly improves the corrosion
resistance factor in my experience, since brass doesn't go green all that fast anyway.

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

P.S. I still long to know whether your nom-de-web signifies a tendency to turn furry and grow
antlers at the full moon--Halloween is coming, you know.

No, I turn into tall, skinny furniture. Or something like that. It's a long story.

P.S. So I'm just supposed to take the word of a potential were-moose that he's a harmless piece of
furniture? Sorry, I've seen too many Hammer films to fall for that line from Christopher Lee
and his ilk. Ambrose Bierce has got your number:

No, I was definitely given to becoming virtually unnoticeable at times, which a weremoose,
werehedgehog, or werelawyer is not. The best description is that I used to remind people of a
hatrack. Coats and such got tossed on me. This does not happen so much anymore; I eventually learned
that when in Rome, it is appropriate to become a Roman candle. (It may also have something to do
with my having taken up tie-dye as a pastime; brilliant rainbow tie-dye dress shirts with
button-down collars cause some people's brains to lock up and sieze in place.)

--
My email address is antispammed; pull WEEDS if replying via e-mail. Yes, I have a killfile. If I
don't respond to something, it's also possible that I'm busy.

(Carl Fogel) said:

Why nickel-plate a brass Presta valve?

To improve cosmetics and inhibit corrosion? There's nothing so wrong about a nice fresh brass valve
stem, but after waiting a couple years in a humid shop in an acidic box, it might not look so
reputable. That's the only reason I can reckon.

A flash of nickel plating is not expensive, but it sure ain't free. I'm not sure why mfgrs. would
find it cost-effective.

Chalo Colina

[email hidden] (charles ramsey) wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

[email hidden] (Carl Fogel) wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

[email hidden] (Chalo) wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...

[snip]

Dear Chalo,

Elsewhere in this thread, Werehatrack identifies a shiny silver Presta valve that I mentioned as
probably nickel-plated.

Why nickel-plate a brass Presta valve? Surely they didn't do it just to make me feel stupid,
did they?

Carl Fogel

Yes but what about dynamic balance?

Dear Charles,

Nothing is more embarrassing than taking humor seriously, but I'll risk it and assume that you're
trying to steer what is, after all, your original post back to the possibility of aluminum tire
valves and suggesting that reducing the weight of the valves even by as little as a gram or two
might improve tire balancing.

I suppose it might, but Jobst Brandt has a number of posts suggesting that balancing bicycle wheels
is a flawed notion.

If you put a bike upside-down and spin the unbalanced wheel, you'll probably notice a bit of a hop.
If you simply hold the front end up in the air and spin the front wheel, you can actually feel the
unbalanced hop.

But when you squash down onto a puny little bicycle with your comparatively massive weight, the hop
is pretty much drowned out. After all, Lance Armstrong is a hardly a large man, but still weighs
seven or eight times as much as his whole bike and about seventy or eighty times as much as his
front wheel and tire.

I seem to recall that Jobst's analogy was that while balancing is important to car tires and wheels,
they're so much more massive than thin little bike wheels that balancing just doesn't matter when
you're pedalling instead of pushing on the gas pedal.

On the other hand, the tiny amount of weight needed to balance a bicycle wheel hardly hurts and may
provide a sense of mechanical satisfaction all out of proportion to its effects. I have a
motorcycling friend who would balance a hamster's exercise wheel.

Carl Fogel

[email hidden] (Chalo) wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...

Dear Chalo,

Oh hell and damnation!

Honest, this Presta valve looks as if it has a brassy, flared, grooved base where the tube attached,
and a silver threaded stem.

Everyone was relying on my ignorant description and suggested nickel plating over brass.

It belatedly struck me that I'm an idiot. What if it's a two-piece fabrication, a wide brass base
and a long aluminum tube?

So I took a hacksaw to this filthy Presta valve and cut a long notch out of it.

Wrong again. (I think.)

As far as I can see with a strong light and a magnifier, it's all silvery, inside, outside, and
clear through the wall, as if the brassy base is the plating, not the other way around.

Maybe it's an all-aluminum valve, the kind that Anthony Muzi mentioned earlier in this thread?

If so, either my eyes are worse than I think, or else the aluminum base discolored smoothly to a
brassy look under the rubber.

The screw-on valve end looks brassy.

I guess this means no apprenticeship offer from you.

If you're interested, feel free to email me an address and I'll mail it to you. If nothing else, it
might remind you how little the general public knows about metals.

Sorry about leading you and everyone else astray.

Carl Fogel

P.S. I ended up posting this under your first post. I saw a second post, but it seems to have
vanished, perhaps due to the cancel-supersede-edit business recently discussed elsewhere.

[email hidden] (Carl Fogel) wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

[email hidden] (Chalo) wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...

Dear Chalo,

Oh hell and damnation!

Honest, this Presta valve looks as if it has a brassy, flared, grooved base where the tube
attached, and a silver threaded stem.

Everyone was relying on my ignorant description and suggested nickel plating over brass.

It belatedly struck me that I'm an idiot. What if it's a two-piece fabrication, a wide brass base
and a long aluminum tube?

So I took a hacksaw to this filthy Presta valve and cut a long notch out of it.

Wrong again. (I think.)

As far as I can see with a strong light and a magnifier, it's all silvery, inside, outside, and
clear through the wall, as if the brassy base is the plating, not the other way around.

Maybe it's an all-aluminum valve, the kind that Anthony Muzi mentioned earlier in this thread?

If so, either my eyes are worse than I think, or else the aluminum base discolored smoothly to a
brassy look under the rubber.

The screw-on valve end looks brassy.

I guess this means no apprenticeship offer from you.

If you're interested, feel free to email me an address and I'll mail it to you. If nothing else,
it might remind you how little the general public knows about metals.

Sorry about leading you and everyone else astray.

Carl Fogel

P.S. I ended up posting this under your first post. I saw a second post, but it seems to have
vanished, perhaps due to the cancel-supersede-edit business recently discussed elsewhere.

The designer of the audi 5 cylinder engine said when I first proposed the idea they all smiled. My
point is the bicycling industry is very conservative. A tire valve does not need to be physically
strong unlike say a spoke nipple therefore it should be possible to make a valve out of aluninum
that is cheaper than brass. It may be that when the surface changes to aluminum oxide that this
would cause the valve to leak. But a bicycle tube that lasts only a year or two may not have time to
corrode. Nature is endlessly surprising no doubt there are problems I have not thought of.

[email hidden] (charles ramsey) wrote in message
news:<[email hidden]>...

Quoted message said:

The designer of the audi 5 cylinder engine said when I first proposed the idea they all smiled. My
point is the bicycling industry is very conservative. A tire valve does not need to be physically
strong unlike say a spoke nipple therefore it should be possible to make a valve out of aluninum
that is cheaper than brass. It may be that when the surface changes to aluminum oxide that this
would cause the valve to leak. But a bicycle tube that lasts only a year or two may not have time
to corrode. Nature is endlessly surprising no doubt there are problems I have not thought of.

Dear Charles,

I would have agreed with you that the valve needn't be very strong--until the other posters
surprised me by mentioning breaking valves off.

I'm still waffling on what the devil my silly Presta is made of (even in sunlight I can't tell for
sure what color the thin wall is--seems to change as my angle of sight changes). All of my other
tubes use obvious brass valves.

But I have great faith in any explanation from Chalo about machine work and metallurgy, so I believe
him when he says that brass is significantly easier to machine than the appropriate aluminum alloys
for what are, after all, cheap tubes.

Carl Fogel