recomponentified

Newoldbike keeps chucking up the occasional surprise which suggests my initial impressions of the amount of use it had had were not generous enough. Five spokes and five nipples from the rear wheel (from which I finally managed to remove the freewheel yesterday by pushing the wrench with a foot rather than pulling with a hand) are fresh and shiny enough to be added to my spare spoke pile, strongly suggesting that they were replaced at some relatively recent point rather than somehow resisting the corrosion to which most of their brethren have succumbed. The rim tape looks fairly old and the remaining thirty spokes and thirty-one nipples make the original spokes and nipples on oldbike's verifiably at-least-twenty-year-old spokes and nipples (which spent a considerable amount of time being housed outside) seem daisy-fresh in comparison, though the quality of component may have had some bearing on their comparative deteriorations. Perhaps the wheelbuilder ran out of shitey cheesium spokes and nipples with five holes still to fill and made up the shortfall with decent-quality materials. The rim appears sound and the hub seems nice and solid under all the dust and hair and grime and oil and cobwebs (but sadly no actual spiders) and will hopefully find time to be re-formed with fresh spokes and replacement tape one evening this week.