Spoke Madness

Atomik carbon rims laced with Berd spokes.

Some time ago now I saw on the famous Mike Curiak blog that he was building a wheel set with these spokes made of a polymer fabric called Berd Spokes. Mike is a pretty straight shooter when it comes to marketing claims. He has always been the guy to call "BS" on things that were not quite right. Now, lately he's been a bit mellower. Maybe it's older age and wisdom, but when Mike speaks, I tend to perk up an ear, and these Berd spokes were something he was serious about. That's all I needed to know. I followed along with his initial explorations of these spokes and when I read about the insane process necessary to make a wheel out of them, (three stretching periods and a 24 hour mandatory rest period), I thought, well..... "Neato, but too complicated for my tastes." Besides, they cost an arm and a leg. Like $600.00 for a set to build wheels? Nope! 

This was a clear case where maybe if you have TONS of disposable income, and a wheel builder certified to do these, you get a set. OR- some brand gets a hold of this and spreads costs out enough that a wheel set might make sense to an average "Joe" or "Jill".  Well, it would appear that this has finally happened and Atomik is that company.

The Atomik/Berd Wheels are available in mountain or gravel configurations. They claim to have an exclusive on the black color Berd spokes, because if you have other wheel builders build Berd spoked wheels, you get the 'whitey-titety' white ones. These spokes are a pretty weird deal too. They supposedly float on water. They are twelve times stronger, from a strength to weight ratio perspective, than steel spokes, and a set of Berd spokes can weigh up to 200 grams less than a set of steel spokes. Berd claims their spokes have 200% better vibration damping qualities than steel spokes do. 

Crazy.

RidingGravel.com is going to be testing a set of these, so hang on..... I'll have ride reports on these later on.

But these aren't the only crazy spokes out there. MG is testing these Gulo Composites wheels which have these way-out carbon braided spokes. And, of course, you all probably know about the Spinergy PBO spoked wheels, which are not metal either. It's like the World has gone mad or something with all these non-metallic spoke offerings. Oh........wait- 

It is 2020. 

Anyway, I'll be looking forward to seeing what these Berd spoked Atomik wheels have up their sleeve. Stay tuned......