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Wooden bikes
- pplonski86 8y agoHow durable are wooden bikes?
- dzedajs 8y agoPretty durable. Better than carbon and can compete with aluminium – since the build is filled.
- pplonski86 8y agoI must admit that they look very nice!
- ArrayList 8y ago> Better than carbon [citation needed]
- Cthulhu_ 8y agoCarbon bikes are made from hollow tubes, hollow tubes can buckle / collapse, plus carbon bikes are designed for lightness, not sturdiness. Wood can take a beating, but is a lot heavier.
- eesmith 8y agoThe wooden bikes mentioned are made from hollow tubes too. "Materia Bikes frames are hollow and lightweight"
- NikolaeVarius 8y agoHollowness is nonsensical argument. Hollow tubes maximize strength per weight
- blakblakarak 8y agoCarbon bikes are made for stiffness and ride quality - you can make equally light bikes with Alu / Ti.
- aequitas 8y agoThey give 5 year warranty which seems like a lot, but one of the bigger bike manufacturers in the Netherlands gives 10 years[0] on (metal) bikes. So my guess is they are less durable. [0] https://www.gazelle.nl/service/garantie https://www.gazelle.nl/service/garantie
- kossmoboleat 8y ago5 year warranty on bike frames is pretty standard. I've shopped around after my aluminium frame broke after 6 years and nearly all manufacturers offered 5 years.
- analog31 8y agoFor comparison, I ride two steel frames from 1982 and 1985, and own a Schwinn from 1963. All have shown signs of use and age, cosmetically, but are still fully functional and safe. That's not to suggest a wooden frame is less durable, but just an anecdotal calibration of what my expectations are.
- ArrayList 8y agoI just don't buy this. At all. Why don't we see the Tour de France peloton rolling through on wooden bikes? They can afford the best of the best.
- consp 8y ago1. Weight, while it is lighter per unit than CFRP, you need more of it to sustain the same rigidity making it heavier. You actually need very little CFRP for a bike and mostly solid or near-solid wooden panels. Quite some of the minimum weight of professional bikes is additional equipment and the gearing mechanism. (min weight is a bit less than 7kg) 2. Stiffness. While not good for every day usage, it is good if you want to go fast. All energy absorbed is wasted as heat or vibrations (e.g. sound).
- Carpetsmoker 8y agoA lot of the post is about comfort and durability. If you're doing the Tour de France then your most important concern by far is pure performance. Everything else is secondary. You're not riding the Tour de France when you're commuting to work or riding as a hobby.
- tokai 8y agoThey want high frame stiffness to minimize loss of power to flexing. I feel you though. I would rather improve ride smoothness with larger tires, lower tire pressure, lesser tension of spokes, different sadle, etc, than riding on a wooden bike.
- crispyambulance 8y agoI don't buy it either. Although, elite racers are ultra-fit people in their teens to twenties and are quite a different demographic than the typical high-end bicycle consumer-- which is males in their 40's and older with some disposable income and a bit of a mid-life crisis going on (I'm one). The wooden bike idea comes around every once in a while, the last one I remember was bamboo. I think it makes a viable frame material but they're very much "a look" rather than some kind special material that provides any specific "ride quality". It is totally possible to have a "quality ride" with any frame material you want: steel, carbon-fiber, titanium, aluminum or wood. When it comes to a "quality ride" people underestimate the importance of three things: 1. Their own fitness, 2. The fit/geometry of the bike and 3. The most simple thing of all, tire selection.
- superqwert 8y agoServer error
- Carpetsmoker 8y agoWebsite seems down at the moment. This still works: https://web.archive.org/web/20181121111648/https://materiabikes.com/2018/10/24/why-wood/ https://web.archive.org/web/20181121111648/https://materiabi...
- sergiosgc 8y agoI don't understand the market for bicycles in the thousands of euro price range. Bikes get stolen often enough for me to never be relaxed leaving such a bike outside a shop or caffe or such. If you can't leave the bike anywhere, it's almost useless, except perhaps as a virtue signalling device.
- sasaf5 8y agoOr as sports equipment.
- danburbridge 8y agoExpensive bikes aren't for leaving around - they are for riding/racing. It is common to have a "beater" bike for cafe/shop/pub outings where its going to be locked up outside.
- mirsadm 8y agoI use my expensive bike for training/exercise not for commuting. Not too hard to understand.
- dabeeeenster 8y agoHuh? I have a £2k bike. Had it years. Never leave it in public. Doesnt stop me commuting on it to work every day or taking it out for rides at the weekend.
- mcv 8y agoI've always had tons of bikes stolen, until I got a light cargo bike. I often only use the ring lock, yet somehow nobody seems to want to steal it. My son's bike got stolen twice over the past year right in front of our house (we park it indoors now), but nobody ever touches my cargo bike. It's the most expensive bike I've ever had.
- systemtest 8y agoI live in the Netherlands and have not had my bike stolen in 25 years. Just use a good lock and only park in secured parking locations with gated access and cameras. And don't buy a bike without knowing the full history and paperwork, otherwise you are shooting yourself in the foot by supporting criminals and raising your chance of having your bike stolen in the future.
- tcgv 8y agoI wonder if wooden bikes bring any safety concerns in the event of a crash, since when wood breaks it can become reasonably sharp, like a spear.
- salty_biscuits 8y agoCan't be any worse than carbon fiber...
- blakblakarak 8y agoI doubt the risk is any worse than with carbon fiber. http://www.bustedcarbon.com/ http://www.bustedcarbon.com/
- samstave 8y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTfu0hjVtzE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTfu0hjVtzE Carbon bike disintegrates at 107 MPH
- gonzo41 8y agoAluminum framed bikes do that, old heavy steel would bend but aluminum tends to break all at once. Though it's worth pointing out that you really have to be doing something stupid to see this sort of rare effect.
- collyw 8y agoSteel is still a popular material for BMX's and dirt jump bikes, where they are subject to more falls.
- Xylakant 8y agoSteel can be welded or bend back into shape, aluminum and carbon fiber cannot. Even slightly bent aluminum may break at the next stiff bump, steel is much more forgiving.
- seotut2 8y agoFunny how the website only highlights the advantages of wood as a material, and plays down its disadvantages. Namely, a stiffer, more rigid frame is more efficient. I personally loved how my aluminium road bike rode, more so than steel, particularly because I can feel the road, and my pedal strokes have a more direct feedback. If a frame absorbs some of that vibration, it is naturally going to absorb some of your energy. So "harshest" ride quality isn't exactly the term I'd assign to aluminum.
- mcv 8y agoI guess it depends on the kind of bike experience you want. I see people riding extraordinarily impractical bikes every single day. Of course that would make wooden bikes a matter of taste, and not superior by any stretch of the imagination.
- bitexploder 8y agoHow impractical can a bike be if it gets the job done? Or did you mean in some not utilitarian context?
- mcv 8y agoThey get the job done, but require much more energy to do it. Some bikes are more about looks than practicality.
- lazerwalker 8y agoAgree completely, although I wouldn't go so far as to say looks are the only reason someone would ride an 'impractical' bike. I pretty much only use fixed-gear bikes for city riding, even in cities like San Francisco and Seattle with tons of hills (albeit one with handbrakes — I'm not suicidal). I like the way they look and feel, and there are other benefits (generally cheaper, easier to maintain, etc) but the main thing I like is the "impracticality". Cycling is my main form of exercise, and on any given day the bulk of my moving-around time might be biking to/from the coffee shop or my coworking space. The inefficient energy consumption and increased cardio is a feature.
- beerlord 8y agoI think bikes will become a niche sports product, replaced by E-Scooters for basic transportation around town, and autonomous cars/minibuses for anything longer.
- seotut2 8y agoBatteries are still too inconvenient and costly. I still regularly ride a wonderful steel bike that's older than myself (a top of the line koga miyata). So with a battery lifetime of the order of ~1000 charge cycles, if you take into considerations the costs of regularly replacing the battery, then ebikes (and e-scooters) are in a different price segment altogether.
- collyw 8y agoYes, this is what makes me sceptical about the trend in electric mountain bikes. You can fix 90% of bike problems on a remote trail, with a small set of tools and a few spare parts. Electric bikes bring something that isn't going to be as easy to fix.
- ArrayList 8y agoI think you're entirely wrong. You've got to realize how many people love crushing it on a road bike and getting all the fun and fitness that come along with that.
- lhopki01 8y agoThere's more to a bike than just pure transport. There's the fact that you exercise at the same time as being one of the fastest ways around.
- jillesvangurp 8y agoYep, got back into cycling to work this summer by siging up for one of the bike sharing programs. Good lifehack if like me you are obviously in need of some exercise but can't really be bothered to go to a gym. Also saving a ton on transport tickets. I wouldn't claim it is faster but definitely more relaxing.
- leni536 8y agoThe best materials for damping vibration have low density and low stiffness. When coupled with the low vibration transfer speed, these properties determine how well a material damps vibration. Based on the table below by "stiffness" they mean Young-modulus. None of these quantities describe damping of vibrations in a material. Also Young-modulus and density determine the longitudinal vibration transfer speed (this is what they list in the table). So saying "coupled with low vibration transfer speed" is a bit misleading.
- 762236 8y agoThis is one of the hardest topics to grasp in cycling, particularly since it is hard to find introductory but authoritative info applied to frame design (as opposed to general mechanical engineering books). And it is tough to map the objective material properties to the subjective feel of the ride quality.
- CompelTechnic 8y agoYeah, I've still rarely seen honest discussions about what damping means in terms of structural materials. If you made a bell out of cast iron instead of bronze, it would still ring, but it would ring for a shorter duration. This is because cast iron has higher internal damping than bronze. It is a viscoelastic effect, in that energy lost is proportional to the speed of movement (strain rate) within the material. I imagine that most of the discussions about bike frame damping are not focused on this viscoelastic damping effect, but are more focused on the dynamic shock absorption effects that are a consequence of the mass and stiffness differences embodied in different frames. When you change frame material, you change so many other variables (tube wall thickness, etc) of the frame that a real apples-to-apples comparison is weird.
- samstave 8y agoDoes this have to do with the "grainy" texture of cast iron? I would think that it has more surface-area-like to traverse, thus the vibrational waves attenuate super fast, as opposed to brass where they can carry?
- danburbridge 8y agoRide comfort (on a rigid bike) is primarily a function of the tyres (size/inflation/construction). A bike with cheap 23c tyres at 150psi will rattle the fillings out of your teeth. The same bike with decent 25c or 28c tyres at e.g. 50-70psi (depending on rider weight) can float along with a magic carpet like ride.
- Yetanfou 8y agoWhy call those 23c tyres "cheap"? Why mention price at all? Ride comfort is a function of tyre size, not tyre price. You can buy very "exclusive" expensive 23c tyres, pump them up to 7 atm. and have just as hard a ride as the person who just overtook you on his "cheap" 23c tyres. That "magic carpet" ride does come at a price but it is not monetary: the softer the tyre, the more resistance and with that the slower the ride.
- Angostura 8y agoYup; I prefer the hard ride and not to feel like I'm peddling a tractor.
- _Wintermute 8y ago> That "magic carpet" ride does come at a price but it is not monetary: the softer the tyre, the more resistance and with that the slower the ride. Unless you're riding on a velodrome, pumping your tyres up to 120+psi doesn't decrease rolling resistance, infact the the opposite is true. If the tyre can deform around small bumps it rolls much more easily. This is why very expensive and fast tyres have casings with a high thread count (sometimes even made of silk) so they are more supple.
- adrianN 8y agoIt makes a big difference if you ride on asphalt or similarly flat surfaces, which many bike commuters do.
- Lio 8y agoFast Fitness produced a little spreadsheet to calculate optimal pressure based on tyre width, bike+rider weight and a very granular assessment of surface.[1] Something else to take into account is the aerodynamic trade off as tyre width grows. I think I read somewhere that 25mm is roughly the sweet spot. What you gain in lower rolling resistance by going up to 28mm you loose in drag. That's a bit anecdotal (sorry) but I have heard it mentioned in a couple of places. The best source I could come up with was from Zipp's web site.[2] Of course that might well be worth it to be more comfortable if it means you can keep your body in a more aero position as that will dwarf any loss from the tyres (again a guess). Hopefully there's some numbers somewhere to back that up. Maybe Bicycle Quarterly or Tour Magazine might be a good bet for anyone interested. Also https://www.bicyclerollingresistance.com/ https://www.bicyclerollingresistance.com/ is always very interesting ...assuming you obsess over bike tyres as I'm sure everyone does. :P [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Clk_LLBYFzA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Clk_LLBYFzA [2] https://zipp.com/support/faq/faq.php https://zipp.com/support/faq/faq.php
- Emma_Goldman 8y agoInteresting idea. Unconscionable price. I don't think you could justify spending that amount of money on a bike unless it is one of your life's deepest passions. Which seems rare. Does the quality of bikes really change that much when you go up the price range, for amateur users?
- tokai 8y ago€3000 is nowhere near the ceiling for expensive bikes, even for amateurs. I know plenty of people that have multiple bikes in that range and beyond. If you want specific solutions things often get expensive. And yes there is a world of differens from a €1000 bike to one that costs €4000.
- rhinoceraptor 8y agoIt's also easy to spend quite a bit extra on a bike once you have it. You almost always need to replace the saddle and pedals, so that's about $200. You get a bike fit and decide you want to change your handlebars and stem, so there's another $200. A year or two later, you want to upgrade to a set of lighter wheels, and that's $500 or more, easily.
- fabricexpert 8y agoPlenty of people spend a LOT more than that on bikes
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoWhat proportion precisely, and in which locality?
- mzybert 8y agoWhat's really making a difference is proper assembly and setup. Then, as long the bike's made out of halfway decent materials and is the right size for you it's going to be a pleasure to ride.
- rhinoceraptor 8y ago
- cuban-frisbee 8y agoI use a bike as my primary transportation (I live in a very, very bike friendly city) and I don't think I have ever seen a wooden bike. Vibrations from the road is not something I've ever considered since it has not been a problem in any of the bikes that I've had. My primary considerations when considering a bike would be: * Price * Durability * Cargo support (like basket and rear hub)
- mymythisisthis 8y agoIf you do a road trip more than 80km, you feel the vibration. I find aluminum is worse than steel. With short, daily trips, I don't think people notice vibration.
- dsego 8y agoMy 2 cents, steel is better, I've had wrist issues with an aluminum bike that I just don't get with the steel one. It seems to dampen and absorb the high frequency vibrations.
- toxik 8y agoThe real solution to vibrations is a thoroughly damped bike, like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N39uwTykTQk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N39uwTykTQk -- it features some next-generation thinking in its spring system.
- Fricken 8y agoI'm loyal to steel because of it's stiffness. It's almost twice a stiff as the next best material, and 20x as stiff as wood, according to the chart in the article. So I don't think wood is for me.
- halbritt 8y agoGenerally speaking this stiffness is the result of the tube shapes necessary to achieve similar strength and stiffness of a steel frame while weighing less. A perfect example of this is the Cannondale CAD3. It had a massive downtube and huge (straight) seat stays as well. It was extraordinarily stiff and terribly unpleasant to ride, for most. Cannondale improved that to some degree by using S-shaped seat stays on the CAAD4 making the frame a less-efficient conductor of vibrations. Modern aluminum bikes use hydroformed tubes with optimized shapes and shouldn't really have these problems. Unless you're talking about something with an aluminum fork. That's just a cheap bike. Aluminum forks are terrible.
- CarVac 8y agoThey're not talking about vibration damping, they're talking about attenuating impulses. To dampen vibrations as soon as possible, you want very high stiffness.
- amelius 8y agoI wish someone invented and actually sold tires which can't go flat. I don't mind if it makes the bike somewhat harder to ride. For short-distance trips (intra-city) this should be no problem, and could perhaps even save me a visit to the gym.
- Tomte 8y agoSchwalbe has such a tire. It‘s filled with some sort of foam: https://www.schwalbe.com/airless-system/index.php/home.html https://www.schwalbe.com/airless-system/index.php/home.html
- amelius 8y agoThanks, this will be my next tire :)
- fifnir 8y agoKeep in mind that this will change the feeling of the bike quite drastically. When you hit a bump with an airtyre, the entire wheel responds to absorb the shock, but with foam tyres that doesn't happen (only the part of the tyre right above where you hit will contract)
- gameswithgo 8y agotires that can't go flat are also extremely terrible.
- SonOfLilit 8y agoMobike bikes have thin tires filled with more rubber
- tonyedgecombe 8y agoYes, and they are horrible to ride on.
- collyw 8y ago
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- rekshaw 8y agoLooking at the test results: 4-6mm permanent deformation when dropping it from 18-20cm? That doesn't seem very good, especially for a city ride with frequent curbs, small steps, road gaps, and a heavy rider like myself (92kg).
- chrisseaton 8y agoDoes that mean if you drop something on the frame you'll get a little dent? Since it's wood? It's not a structural problem is it? Just like a cricket bat gets dents each time you hit a ball but it still works fine.
- hwillis 8y agoHere's a video of this test being performed on another frame: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCU7VT9fOpo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCU7VT9fOpo With a 20 cm drop the velocity is 4.95 m/s, or a pretty average bicycle pace (11 mph, 18 kph), ridden directly into a wall. All things considered, a 4-5 mm deformation isn't that bad. As long as it isn't splintering or splitting, which would be dangerous, the bike isn't going to see much forces in that specific direction. Rider weight doesn't matter because the rider will immediately be thrown over the handlebars. In more realistic scenarios like hitting a curb or dropping the bike, the force will be much more vertical, which will give a several-times-higher mechanical advantage due to the fork rake. The tires will also absorb a lot of the shock loads. In general wood doesn't lose strength from being beat up, no. Wood construction standards (which admittedly, I know only the basics about) usually assure you that dents and surface defects are not a big deal. The strength in most woods (particularly soft woods) comes from the fact that they're very fibrous and anisotropic, so when they're dented it usually moves the fibers around without actually breaking them.
- lower 8y agoThey don't mention that wood is quite a bit heavier than other materials. Their road bike frames weight 2.5kg, where modern (and much cheaper) carbon fiber frames come in below 1kg.
- markmark 8y agoYes, every time I've seen an article on wooden bikes I've looked and they are crazily expensive while being ridiculously heavy. I also tend to think they're ugly.
- gameswithgo 8y agoThe vibration dampening is a red herring. As a point of comparison, the differences in dampening between various frames/materials is on the order of ~1psi of tire pressure normally. In other words, if you found yourself with the harshest of frames, you could drop air pressure by 1 or 2psi and be at the same level as the "smoothest" frame.
- eitally 8y agoBut dampening happens differently in different parts of the frame. For example, thinner & curved seat stays vs a suspension fork, or round 853 steel tubing vs highly aero-optimized low profile carbon, or deep dish carbon wheels vs traditional aluminum. Your statement is technically accurate, but that doesn't mean the feel of the ride will be equivalent.
- modzu 8y agofor real -- is an aluminum wire stiffer than a steel rod? no. bike tubes are made very differently depending on the materials; any model of stifness that you feel at your BODY needs to compensate for all of that
- gameswithgo 8y agoProfessional level riders are absolutely certain they can feel the difference between deep carbon wheels vs aluminum when they test them. Then if you disguise the wheels such that they cannot tell which is which, they are completely unable to discern them. The same is true with frame types typically believed to be vastly different. A professional triathlete and ex cat 1 road racer I know was sure he could tell the difference between Cervelo's comfort, round tube frame (The R series) and their aerodynamic frame (the S series). He devised a helmet with an obscuring screen so he could test the two in blind fashion, and he was unable to discern which was which, by riding them. Its all just nonsense, really, imho. There are dozens of examples like these I've seen through the years. People with high degrees of expertise, certain of these feeling differences, blind them, and they can't tell.
- 8y ago
- goodoldneon 8y agoHopefully they never have a fire sale.
- mr_overalls 8y agoEngineered wood is truly an amazing material. While touring a newly-constructed home a few weeks ago, I saw what appeared to be floor joists constructed out of thin, cheap particle-board. It turns out that they're made of engineered wood, and are actually stronger than an equivalent sawed wood beam. https://imgur.com/a/3AkZblF https://imgur.com/a/3AkZblF
- abakker 8y agoEngineered wood and chipboard/ Oriented strand board (OSB) are a very different animal that particleboard or MDF. Each has their purpose. True particleboard is a very crappy material, best used for ballast and being cheap. MDF is smooth, stable, and machinable, and OSB provides a lot of tortional resilience. For any home woodworkers, I don’t recommend working with OSB or particleboard. However, OSB is moderately waterproof, which neither of the others is.
- samstave 8y agoIn the 80s, in Tahoe, we built a tree-fort near my house. My dad was a general contractor and we had a lot of MDF available to use from his company... Yeah - MDF and SNOW do not a happy tree house make. The MDF sops up water like a sponge and deteriorates into its constituent particulate... which really sucked because our fort had two levels.... We built a house on the truckee river and there was a giant glue-lam beam that was used for the main truss of the roof. It had to be custom ordered from some manufacturer, and when I asked my dad why we were using that, he talked about how the glued laminate layers were stronger than a single material beam.
- abakker 8y agoA critical part of composite materials is that they are dimensionally stable. They don’t warp, elongate, or shrink, which is better than true wood. The glue and different grain orientations counteract the normal movement. The grain patterns in OSB look a lot like those in parts made of forged carbon, and provide a similar purpose.
- 8y ago
- justjash 8y agoI think they look cool and everything, but it still doesn't seem very practical for real use. Maybe if you are just occasionally cruising around on a nice day. Most people don't do very well with bike maintenance and I assume this would be a major issue with a bike like this.
- no_you_ 8y agoIf wooden bikes were the best the bike, we would have figured it out a hundred years ago. This is dumb.
- jefftk 8y agoI would expect them to have problems over time with the wood-metal joints, since they respond to heat/humidity changes differently. This is often a problem with musical instruments.
- Overtonwindow 8y agoIt’s helpful to understand that, like carbon fiber, it’s all in the epoxy resins. That’s where the strength and durability ultimately come from.
- braindongle 8y agoRiders can certainly be over-concerned about weight, but uh, it is pretty important. How much to these expensive beasts weigh?
- gHosts 8y agoDid yer hear about the Wooden Engine? It wouldn't go.
- tlynchpin 8y ago"The best bike is the one you ride."
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]