Wheelbuilding / Wheel Building / Wheel build help

Are Sapim spokes measured to the inside of the J bend?

That would explain why I ordered my spoke 1mm longer than the ones I was trying to match :(

edit: Sheldon says yes

yes from the inside of the bend. use a spoke ruler to get it right. Park Tool or the sapim ruler are good.

I've found that good steel rulers (old Staedtler in my case) have been easily accurate enough to measure spokes with; just place the hook over the end of the ruler (as long as the mm bits go right to the end) and it has always corresponded with the stated size.
YRMV

Does anyone know what diameter the heads are on straight pull CX-Ray spokes? I'm trying to work out if I can reuse a pair of hubs from some Shimano WH-9000-C35 wheels with non-proprietary spokes.

I have some at home. Can measure tonight and see. A word of warning. They are very expensive spokes.

A word of warning. They are very expensive spokes.

A word of advice; @danstuff doesn't care 🙂

Excellent, thanks. The Shimano spokes seem to have an unusual square head, but I'd like to re-use them if I can.

I do care. Just not very much. Anyway, the hubs are effectively free and the rims were cheap. I can afford to splash some cash on some spokes, provided they'll work.

Does anyone know what diameter the heads are on straight pull CX-Ray spokes?

3.92mm

Cheers. I'll measure the heads of the Shimano spokes when I get back home. Fingers crossed...

Say I wanted to build a wheelset with all spokes the same length so that I only need to take a couple of spares - what hubs/rims do I need? I'm guessing they have to be offset rims?

Disc? Rim brake? Single speed/fixed? It might be likely that a non offset disc brake build would only use two lengths, mine did for bitex CL to 650b WTB Koms.

Other question is why? Max youd have to carry is 8 spokes, 2 for every differing length. If you need more than that the wheel hasn't been built properly. Plenty easier ways to lose weight if thats what youre chasing

Disc/geared. Yeah I suppose you're right, it's not a huge practical advantage. I just like the idea of buying/carrying one set of spokes rather than four sets that are going to get mixed up and cost more. The Marin 4 Corners has the wheels built with only one spoke length and it seemed like a good idea. If it requires expensive hubs that I can't get easily then I won't bother.

Okay, ignore that stuff about matching spoke lengths. Can someone eyeball this and tell me if it's stupid?

Front

Rear

It'd for a gravel/road wheelset and I'm about 80kg. I'm not too worried about low spoke counts as I've been touring on 18-spoke wheels before and never had any problems - something to do with my riding style perhaps. I have a set of 36h, 600g-rim monsters for heavier duty stuff. I would build them myself but maybe have them checked over by LBS as I've only ever built one wheel before.

Can I do better OTP?

You can get those hubs for a bit cheaper, ~£135 i think. Spokes and nipples wont be that light unless youre using cx rays. I used those hubs, 420g rims and ACI Alpina (double butted) spokes and it came to just under 1700g all in.

Again, I wouldnt worry about weight too much. Do you have a valid reason to use 28h over 32h?

Spokes and nipples I just guessed at from the Pillar website. But no prices so I don't know if I was looking at something too expensive.

Again, I wouldnt worry about weight too much. Do you have a valid reason to use 28h over 32h?

Purely that those Pacenti rims are super cheap on PlanetX at the moment. I'm thinking CL25 instead of TL28 though; 25g lighter each and a more suitable rim width for what I want, only £5 more.

Spoke weight is generally quoted at the shortest length they offer, for obvious reasons. Personally I'd just go for 32h but if they're built right 28H could/should be fine for 80kg.

ACI Alpina are currently the cheapest double butted you can order in the UK. You won't see much of an improvement spending more on fancier spokes than those.

With regards to wheel building, get a decent tension meter and do a lot of research before building. No reason you couldnt build a bombproof pair of wheels on little experience. The key is just taking your time and continually adjusting until all the tensions are even, the wheel is true and round. This might take up a whole afternoon per wheel so paying someone like Arup ~£20ish per wheel to do this for you could be economical. Having verniers to measure up the hubs and rims is also crucial

ACI Alpina are currently the cheapest double butted you can order in the UK. You won't see much of an improvement spending more on fancier spokes than those.

Cool, I'm absolutely not bothered by 30g extra weight on the spokes, so I'll go for those.

With regards to wheel building, get a decent tension meter and do a lot of research before building. No reason you couldnt build a bombproof pair of wheels on little experience. The key is just taking your time and continually adjusting until all the tensions are even, the wheel is true and round. This might take up a whole afternoon per wheel so paying someone like Arup ~£20ish per wheel to do this for you could be economical. Having verniers to measure up the hubs and rims is also crucial

I have some calipers so that should be fine. I built my last wheel without a tension meter - got it true and round eventually but it took a bloody long time... I took it into the shop afterwards just to have it checked over and the guy said I'd done a great job. So I'd probably just wing it on the tension again and just ping them to check the pitch is approximately even. Then take them to the shop for a check over if they don't seem to be staying true or something.

Like I said I do already have a set of wheels that do the job - they're just overbuilt for 99% of my riding - so I can ride them in the meantime and spend an age on the build process.

if you want spokes to be the same length that not possible for the front but is for the rear. you need to use a novatec D772 or D792 hub in 32H drilling.

a decent tension meter like sapim or DT swiss. The sapim guage is £560 and the DT Swiss guage is £400. These guages come with there own spoke calibration chart and while a sapim race and DT comp are close if you use both gauges on the same spokes and refer to each other tension chart you get different tensions (less than 100N difference) not enough to cause a major problem. not sure if the sapim guage chart or the DT Swiss chart is wrong as I can create my own with my own load cell and get something a bit different not by much though. The DT Gauge does not CX-ray or the pillar 1422 spokes on the NDS rear. I dont know if it shows a reading for the aerolite nds rear maybe not which makes it a bit pointless as your back to tone.

The park TM-1 is no better than tone useful if your deaf I suppose but it is not marked as a aid to deaf wheel builders. parks calibration chart does not match any other.

Using D772/771 and TL28 results in 293mm on rear spokes and 293.1/293.7mm on front. If you split the spokes to 293.4mm each it looks like you get a 1mm deflection/dishing of the rim. Could you get away with 292mm spokes on every side in that case?

99% of people don't need their wheels to have exactly the right tension. I've never aimed for a certain tension in wheels, but I use a Park Tools TM-1 to make sure the tensions are even, for doing this it is a good tool. Citation: ive built 20+ wheels for myself and others and never had a spoke break. No need to knock the TM1 to try and justify spending 400+ on a tension meter

99% of people don't need their wheels to have exactly the right tension

True, although a more elegant formulation would be that for most people on most builds, the range of tension between too low and too high is quite wide. The range narrows as the load rises and the spoke count/cross section reduces, until you get to the Dymaxion design for a particular load case in which only one precise value of build tension will result in the spokes never going to either zero tension or terminal overload.

I did not say people should spend lots on a tension meter but having used a tm1 it is no better than tone. That's all I am trying to say.

Edit. I am going to check and calibrate all my guages to see. Maybe one is uncalibrated giving the odd result.