Her thought was
that the stainless steel the spokes are made of is starting to "crystalize"
and become brittle with age. This makes it prone to breaking.

This is a classic "old wive's tale" told by uneducated welders, etc.

The solid state of steels, stainless or otherwise, is a crystal. Your spoke
did not further "crystalize" in use.

She did not
think the problem was caused by looseness of some spokes.

Why not? If the quality of the wheel build was such that one spoke failed,
it is not out of the question that other spokes are experiencing similar
fatigue loadings and damage.

Suggested fix was
to re-spoke the wheel (~$50) or buy a new wheel (~$70) or just fix the
spokes as they break (~$10 labor total plus 66 cents for each spoke). For
now, I'm doing the last.

I vote for biting the bullet and having the wheel respoked or buying a new
wheel. Life's too short to be running back to the shop every time a spoke
pops, and at this point you've almost spent half the cash required to
re-spoke the wheel. I would try to find out who in the area has the best
reputation as a wheelbuilder, though - a professions go, wheelbuilding is as
much art as science.


Chris Neary


"Science, freedom, beauty, adventu what more could
you ask of life? Bicycling combined all the elements I
loved" - Adapted from a quotation by Charles Lindbergh