Vent: a crusty old mechanic at a shop in Portland showed me the bent spoke trick and I still do it 12 years later

Lily Roberts · 2026-09-25T23:10:03.87433+00:00

I was 19 and working my first shop job in Portland, and this older guy named Ray watched me fight with a seized nipple on a rusty wheel for way too long. He walked over without a word, pulled one spoke out of the scrap bin, hooked the j-bend through the nipple, and used the spoke itself as a little handle to crank it loose. I laughed because it looked so dumb, but it popped free in about 5 seconds. I still keep one bent spoke taped to my bench for exactly that job, and the kid I trained last year thought I was joking too. Deleted the photo I took of it years ago, so does anyone else have a weird trick they picked up from an older mechanic?

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Vent: a crusty old mechanic at a shop in Portland showed me the bent spoke trick and I still do it 12 years later | Bicycle Mechanics - Free To Speak