BERD Polymer spokes

[monkeyseemonkeydo]

Ouch!

[AdamR28]

That's one of the reasons I went DIY! Though I think given my 'hourly rate', cost of tools and cost of materials (about £50 a wheel), I probably should just have bought some 

[Swoofty]

5 hours ago, AdamR28 said:

... but the UK distributor won't sell you spokes, you have to get your wheels built by them: https://zedbikewheels.com/product/berd-custom-build-string/

 

Works out about £11 a spoke with the build charges.

Oh that's unfortunate. If anyone's willing, i can order spokes for them and then send them to the UK.

My order came out to $359 for the spokes, nipples and the first time build kit. It would be $315 for them to build it for me, but where's the fun in that!

Edit: Can you guys order spokes direct from BERD in Minnesota?

Edited February 7, 2022 by Swoofty

[manuel]

19 hours ago, AdamR28 said:

Works out about £11 a spoke with the build charges.

[Swoofty]

Well here goes nothing.... Very time consuming so far.

[US_BenR]

Such a beautiful hub

[AdamR28]

Nice. Keen to hear how you get on Peter!

Mine are still going well, though I've sourced some DM20 material which in theory should be better (zero creep). Will rebuild both wheels with the new lacing technique when I get some time.

[Swoofty]

First ride was today! It continued to lose tension for about 5 days, but now it's been solid for 2 days so off for a ride. The wheel is an Extralite Hyper JF hub to a Light Bicycle Recon 33 28h rim. The wheel, minus rim tape, tyre, rotor and tube weighs in at 550g. I still need to weigh the wheel that came off because it was a waif as well. The first ride felt like a normal stiff front wheel. Psychologically I thought it felt lighter, but not night and day. I'm working on half cabs at the moment and today I was able to pull off more than usual and in both directions. Must be the wheel. 

[Swoofty]

I've been riding the BERD nearly everyday and finally took it off to put it back on the truing stand. It was still true 'enough' but the tension was uniformly down again. I tightened it all back up, true and dish and went out for a sunset ride. Felt more like it should again. Adam and Ali, how long did yours 'stretch' before settling in?  

[Ali C]

I had to tighten mine three times since it was built, once the next day, another a week later and one more about a month later…since then I’ve not touched it but I have mostly been riding the fat bike these last few weeks.

 

I did ride hard whilst filming on the Hex yesterday and it was perfect, no tension needed before or after 

[Swoofty]

Berd offers a dye kit now so you can have more than white or black spokes. It only works with their white spokes so I'm out of luck, but it's a start.

 

[Swoofty]

BERD now offer BMX length spokes for all the little bike people. Somebody else will have to go first, I'm building a mountain bike right now. My son finally wants to MTB!!

[AdamR28]

On 4/14/2022 at 4:09 PM, Swoofty said:

Adam and Ali, how long did yours 'stretch' before settling in?  

Apologies, I missed this! Usually one retension after sitting a day or two, then another after the first ride, perhaps a third a few weeks later.

The Berd material is a DM20, which should in theory be zero creep, but I think the splice beds in, along with where the line goes through the hub.

 

How are you spokes doing @Swoofty? I saw Ali the other day and his disc side ones are almost dead now after ~1 year. Some of them are probably more than 50% frayed down at the hub, I'm amazed they're still holding to be honest  Perhaps this is a benefit of the Berd hub attachment method - effectively having two pieces of line contacting the hub flange.

I've done a bit more testing and built a couple of pairs of road wheels recently with a Berd-type system, using thinner gauge but higher spec line. The spokes come out at 2.2g each (~295mm length), and hold to above the breaking load of a Sapim Laser.

I'll do the same system for my XC race wheels, as the Vectran line I previously tried hasn't worked that well (too stretchy).

Its amazing how strong this stuff is - just 1.5mm diameter!

I now build the wheels in a jig, its so much faster and easier to get the spokes the right length. 

This stuff works really well on a road bike (my 5.8kg "new to me but made from 2nd hand eBay bargains special" below) as they filter out that annoying buzz you get from hard tyres and stiff carbon frames.

And something @Maintenance Justice will fill you on about in the near future I'm sure

[Swoofty]

Mine have held up well. I gave them the 3 month tune up and they haven't changed since. I stopped riding this bike not too long after that and went back to 24" (although I did ride it yesterday b/c I'm in recovery mode and it's the easiest riding of my trials bikes). I'm not in the proper financial situation to build up a pair of berds for the 24 yet. Adam your hub interface is definitely much more elegant.  I can't wait until someone asks me to build them a 48h BMX wheel with these

[Maintenance Justice]

So we’re doing this. MOD disc, rope spoke wheel set. @AdamR28has done an insane amount of R&D and multiple prototypes and we feel fairly confident that the current iteration is up the job of 19/20” trials wheels. Naturally I’ll be doing a hideous deng colour scheme. The rims are some new trials rims from Extention, basically very similar to Jitsie / Echo / Clean. They’re branching out into comp parts picking up where Echo left off so it’ll be interesting to see how they hold up. Rear hub will be the Pro 4 and front hub tbc. 

[craigjames]

12 hours ago, Maintenance Justice said:

So we’re doing this. MOD disc, rope spoke wheel set. @AdamR28has done an insane amount of R&D and multiple prototypes and we feel fairly confident that the current iteration is up the job of 19/20” trials wheels. Naturally I’ll be doing a hideous deng colour scheme. The rims are some new trials rims from Extention, basically very similar to Jitsie / Echo / Clean. They’re branching out into comp parts picking up where Echo left off so it’ll be interesting to see how they hold up. Rear hub will be the Pro 4 and front hub tbc. 

Loving the colour combo! Whats the cost of this sort of spoke set up and is it that much lighter than steel spokes? How come you're going with a Pro4 and not a Pro 5? Like the idea of running a freehub on my mod.

[Maintenance Justice]

34 minutes ago, craigjames said:

Loving the colour combo! Whats the cost of this sort of spoke set up and is it that much lighter than steel spokes? How come you're going with a Pro4 and not a Pro 5? Like the idea of running a freehub on my mod.

The Varial seems to have morphed into this purple and yellow statement so I thought I would roll with it Cost of the material is really cheap, I think about £5 for the length here which is enough for two wheels but @AdamR28 will probably put me right on that. You still need spokes to make the 'anchors' which the rope is glue'd onto, but I guess any silver spoke (or black if you want to take the paint off) will do, so some old ones would serve to save a bit of cash. Running the Pro 4 because it's what I've got, it's purple and it works! It was the first hub to get the 116mm treatment and it's still going strong without a single hiccup in about a year now.

[AdamR28]

Weight for a set of 60x 180mm ish plain gauge spokes is ~350g, so with these at just over 2g each, it's more than 200g saving (in return for about 10 hours of your life ).

Not massive in real terms, but pretty huge if you look at it as a percentage.

[craigjames]

That's a fairly sizeable weight saving for the cost outlay, i guess the main drawback is it's labour intensive = cost, if you can find someone to do it for you.

I'll have to do some reading and look into it. I mean i've happily gone to the extent of replacing everything I can with Ti parts, so rope spokes is probably good value in comparison!