My motorcycle has spoked wheels and the spokes are in need of a good clean up. Your task is to invent a small machine which will clean the spokes quickly and effectively because using steel wool is giving me carpel tunnel syndrome!!
Well, I must say I expected a little more innovation from the uk.d-i-y'ers I know and love. Sort of. ;)
I had a go at the spokes with a wire wheel in a drill, which is admittedly quite a bit larger than a Dremel, but it's very tricky cleaning the whole spoke without attacking from lots of angles and both sides and even then it's difficult to do the ends, and the wheel skitters off at random intervals and attacks other things. What I was thinking of was something like a small abrasive polo (with a sprung cutout, perhaps, to get it on the spoke) which could be slipped onto the spoke and moved serenely from top to bottom.
Then I wondered if something along these lines had already been invented but I doubted it because I couldn't think of any other uses for such a thing!
=============================== Traditional method - a long strip of cloth (about 1" wide) coated with valve grinding paste. Pull back and forth from both sides. Cover tyres before starting.
an electrolytic bath would strip the lot in one go, no physical effort needed. It would mean dunking either the whole wheel under water, or else just do half or a third of it at a time, rotating between dips.
Chocolate digestive > keyboard interface moment, that caused.
Reminds me of the story of the trainee priest suddenly asked to take confession. Not knowing what penance to impose on a confessant (?) he popped his head out of the box and asked a passing choirboy "What does Fr O'Reilly normally give for oral sex?".
The choirboy replied, "two mars bars and a milky way"
It's a chromed steel wheel with traditional spokes. I read that Harley-D coat their spokes with...hmm...cadmium, was it? Anyway, once this stuff is removed it's apparently nigh on impossible to stop the rust coming back. This is a Japanese bike - XV535 Virago - so I don't know if they're coated or galvanised or what but the ones I had the patience to clean came up nice and shiny...
More seriously, there's a tool called a "power file": a very narrow, thin belt sander, with the belt sticking out, as it were. Might be worth a look...
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