Weight, weight—don’t tell me!
word count: 1800 or so.
reading time: 7:30
warning: there’s an item plug for Quick-Gloat the end of it.
Skepticizing “Form Follows Function” in commercial products
You’ve heard the expression, “Form follows function” (FFF) a million times, and in nature it does. If you have a long stout beak and a shock-absorbing head, you’ll make a good woodpecker, and if you have greasy feathers, a spoonish beak, and webbed feel, play to your strengths and be a duck. The longer a plant or animal has lived in an environment, the more suited they’ll be to it.
Nature shapes you through the age of reproduction, because that’s the point. Once you’re no longer fertile, nature stops caring, and things go to hell. But nature is still better at shaping its products than businesses are.
Yet you hear designers invoke FFF all the time, but many commercial products, especially recreational ones, follows trends & fashion, and are heavily influenced by marketing, endorsements, and profit.
Their form often take the path of most momentum and least resistance. Let’s shape the car like this, because it has elements of the ‘30s and yet looks futuristic. Techies who want to seem futuristic yet respectful of the past will go nuts. Or superstar hero sex symbol wears shoes like this, so urban youth will have to have them, and Millennials will follow.
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How much science should drive design depends on what’s at stake if it fails. If a fork fails, somebody gets hurt. If a wardrobe fails, millions of fans get a chance to be offended by Janet Jackson’s breast.
If FFF in buildings, there would be less variety and fewer famous architects. The New York Times wouldn’t have a Style section, because we’d already know. The Rhode Island School of Design/Pratt Institute/Cooper Union wouldn’t exist.
When science is just barely involved, a product is designed to copy or to fill a niche, to appeal to a broad base or an emerging tiny one, to blend in with the competition or to attack it even when there’s nothing really to attack. FFF is always a good beacon, but if you design a commercial product, you have to know how any change in design affects the structure..
You can’t look at what sells the most and assume that form has evolved with the same objective, rigorous selection criteria as that which shaped a salmon or turtle or giraffe.
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If you were one of the 500 or so who read Rivendell Reader No. 44, you’ll know that the early bicycles were modified carriages, and then they went really wacky when they became high-wheelers. After 15 years of that, function reeled the design back in, and bikes were much improved. Then cars and motorcycles influenced the design, and for about 80 years we were a nation of kids bikes that wanted to be adult motor vehicles, and that’s not such an organic influence. (ALSO, if you have that issue, the dinosaur reference should have been 200 million, not 200,000.)
For a while, bicycle racing got bikes away from car and motorcycle influences, but went too far, made bikes too skinny. Except now mountain bikes are more and more motorcycle-like, so the influence is back.
Special-purpose bikes are usually good at what they do, but the better it is at its special purpose, the less it can do and do well outside whatever it is it’s good at. They’re like butterflies that feed on only one plant.
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Bike riders often hold up a track bike, stripped of it’s brakes and gears and racks, as the purest form of the bicycle. It is the form of bike that most appeals those most enchanted by the Antoine de Saint St. Exupery quote in the English translation of Wind, Sand, and Stars, but it’s nowhere to be found in the French original (titled Terre de Hommes, or Land Of the Men). So I don’t know who acturally said it. Regardless, it’s famous, often cited, and sounds kind of like a zen ideal:
In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there’s no longer anyting to add, but when there’s no longer anyting to take away. when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness.
— English translator of Wind Sand and Stars?
The nakedness is misleading. What does that mean in a bicycle? That a fixed gear bike is better than a geared one? That a bike without of bags and baskets is more perfect than a functional jalopy? Manufacturers could be said to “strip bicycles down to their nakedness perfection” when they design for weight, removing all useful features and leaving the bike still undeniably a bike but not a useful one.
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In 2016 it’s impossible to make a safe, strong, durable, useful, all-weather, and good for riding on rough roads with loads bicycle that weighs less than 27lbs. You don’t want to be able to carry things? Get rid of the racks and bags, save three to four pounds, and no fair putting them in a backpack, because you’d have to count that weight, too. You don’t want safety or longevity? Ride a carbon frame and fork, and save another three or four pounds. You don’t care about being able to ride on rough or wet roads? Nix the fenders, wide rims, and biggish tires, and save at least five pounds.
To the average rider who’s been convinced by the media that lightness is a goal in itself and is accustomed to 16lb carbon road bikes, 27lbs seems like a ton. The only thing a 17lb road bike is good for is riding hard on a relatively smooth road in fair weather while carrying nothing; and then, only if you weigh less than 150lbs. Even when all those things are in plance, let’s say your sole purpose for riding is to ride hard and get fit. Is the 16-pounder useful for that? It’s an interesting question. If personal fitness is high on your radar, you already know that strength and speed come from effort, and if the lighter bike is easier to pedal, it’s the wrong tool for the job.
I’m not suggesting you ride a 100-pound bike, because a too heavy bike isn’t fun enough to ride enough to achieve those fitness goals. Let’s say the “happy weight range” is between 16 and 60lbs. Half the difference is 22lbs, so you’re at 38lbs. That’s not the bike you want to ride on group fitness rides when everybody else is on 16 poounders, but when you’re solo, the extra 22lbs is only an advantage.
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Snow shovels
I want to talk about something else now to drive home the point. In the ‘80s, lightweight folding plastic snow shovels were popular among winter mountaineers.
I worked in REI back then, and the most popular shovels had telescoping handles and folded heads that allowed a carrying length of 22 inches, and a digging length 32 inches. The heads were about 7-in. x 10-in., which is pathetically small when you’re trying to build a snow shelter.
The blades were in line with the handles, so snow would slide off as you tried to lift it. An inline blade is good for digging horizontal, shoulder-height holes, not downward ones. Some of the heads you could lock in at an angle, but the lightweight joint was too weak to take the added stress.
To save weight, they were made of Lexan or another high tech plastic, and they broke in hard use cold weather. In those snow shovels, Form Followed Marketing. People like small, light, folding tools, and they assume they work well because the brands are famous the the sellers have a good reputation.
Those shovels sold well to people who liked the idea and security and the “ready for anything” look a shovel gave them, but they couldn’t have been worse for the job.
If you actually used a shovel to move snow, you got an aluminum grain scoop from a hardware or feed store. It had a wooden handle because wooden handles suffer nicks and gouges and cold weather way better than plastic does. The head was offset for convenient lifting of snow (you don’t drive in a grain shovel with your feet, so there’s no need to have the blade and handle in line). You could cut the handle to any length bolt on a T- or D-handle, so your hand wouldn’t slide along the shaft or get poked when you dug.
With a snow shovel, the bigger it is, the more useful it is, because lots of snow is light, and you want a big scoop to move a lot of it fast. Mine weighed 3lbs, was a yard long, with a slightly offset head that measures 13.5-in. x 15-in. I strapped it onto the back of my (Rivendell Mountain Works) Jensen pack—making it look like a hobo pack—but I used that shovel to build countless snow caves, and never wished it was lighter or more compact.
I have no doubt that it would have been a commercial flop. Sometimes the tiny folding plastic shovel might provide some psychological comfort, when the chance of encountering snow was small. The modern road bike is the equivalent of that.
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So back to the minimum weight for a near-maximum bike. An all-around safe and useful bike (in my opinion) must:
• have a steel frame and fork, because steel is strong and has the best/safest failure mode. You get warning. A steel bike that seems to fail suddenly is one whose warnings were not listened to. It’ll weigh between 7 and 8 lb.
• have a pair of wheels that, with quick-release skewers and wide-range steel-cog cassette in place, weighs 9 to 11 lb.
• have at least one rack, and at least one basket (with net) or bag. Ways to carry gear or groceries front and rear. Two bags, two baskets, whatever you like. A Wald Medium basket weights more than a pound. The rack it goes on weigh more than a pound, and a bag big enough to let you load it quickly and sloppily and shop or camp without fear will weigh at least a pound and a half. That’s 3.5lb minimum.
It adds up fast when the criteria are safety and all-around usefulness.I think 30lbs is closer to reality. Remember: racks, baskets, fenders, bags, and stout wheels.
————Praising Quick-Glo —————–
It’s a de-ruster and polisher/shiner, and according to the tub it comes in, it also works on glass and rubber. It works really well on dull or rusty metal, scorched pans. Here’s some pix:
THis lug was bare metal, sprayed with in salt water several times. and has been outside for 3 years. It’s going to be tough to get through that.
It’s not super impressive, but it was hard to get a good, long stroke on a lug. Now here’s a pipe. Actually, a steer tube (part of a fork). Also left to the elements. You know, at Bstone in Japan, they keep a cyclone fence up as a “Natural weathering station,” for every kind of bike part imaginable.We have a mini version of it here.
some old deeper rust, some new superficial rust. Piece of cake…
It was a piece of cake. Like, ten seconds, and I think it was ready in seven.
Quick-Glo is $15 for a 7 to 8oz tube. Two year’s worth, at least. Here’s a link, and thanks for visiting.
—Grant
