A customer brought me a wheel to work on.

It's a Ksyrium SL.
The job is just to replace some broken spokes, but


The Ksyrium's spokes have nipples with a coarse thread pitch,
and the threading doesn't start from the very end.
On top of that, since the original high spoke tension has been released,
the radial runout at the point where spokes have broken becomes quite pronounced,
and getting the first thread engagement on a new spoke and nipple often takes some real effort.
This is only an issue when replacing just one or two spokes—
building from scratch doesn't present this problem.
You can either temporarily tighten the spokes before and after the broken area to pull the rim inward,
or partially disassemble the wheel to nearly release all spoke tension,
and then the nipple threads on smoothly.
Once you get that first turn on, you're golden.