I have an apology and correction! (→here)
While I could edit the article text, I prefer to leave things like this as-is
so I'm keeping it unchanged.
Regarding the recent American Classic hub with slotted holes (→here)
I received a comment to the effect of:
"If you're willing to accept having the valve hole within the final crossing bundle,
both JIS and Italian lacing are possible, but..."
And further:
"Isn't the real issue with this hub actually that 'if you avoid the slot and lace it,
there's a possibility the spokes will cross over the valve hole'?"
The concern was about my statement that
"this hub is limited to either JIS or Italian lacing"
They were saying "isn't that a bit off...?"
They're right about that. But the rule that
"the valve hole must be in the gap between crossing bundles, not within the bundle itself"
is extremely important to my wheel building philosophy.
(That's why I poke a screwdriver through the valve hole during the mock build to check)
If I'm going to build an ugly wheel with the valve hole within the crossing bundle,
I'd rather do JIS lacing instead of Italian lacing.
Whether it's same-side or mixed spoke counts, switching between JIS and Italian
reverses the right-drop/left-drop relationship,
but the whole reason I care about right-drop or left-drop in the first place
is to keep the valve hole out of the crossing bundle.
Even if a wheel that says "I avoided the slot and did Italian lacing,
but the valve hole ended up in the crossing bundle" had no performance issues,
I wouldn't want to sell it.
So the idea of "it's fine to have the valve hole in the spoke bundle" never even occurred to me.
That's why I wrote it as "limited to either JIS or Italian"—if the condition
that the valve hole must be in the gap between bundles is met,
then yes, it does work out that way.
For those who think "if I really want either JIS or Italian lacing,
it's okay to have the valve hole within the crossing,"
my wording might be hard to accept.
But I've never built (at least not for sale) a wheel that way,
so to me, this slotted hub really is limited to JIS or Italian lacing.
That's how I expressed it.
Update: Now that I'm back in an environment with
a whiteboard and camera, I'm adding this update.
There may be some overlap in expression with the previous section, but please forgive that.
I'll now refer to the valve hole being within the crossing bundle as "within" (なか),
and being in the gap between bundles as "between" (あいだ).
The slotted American Classic hub mentioned earlier is limited to
JIS or Italian lacing if you maintain the "between" positioning,
but regarding that word "limited"—
I received a comment saying if you do "within" lacing,
both JIS and Italian should be possible, so isn't that "a bit off...?"
I've been excluding ugly "within" laced wheels from my concept of what a wheel should be,
which is why I wrote "limited to JIS or Italian."
If "within" lacing is acceptable, then 4-spoke Italian 24H wheels
could be built left-drop and it would work fine.
I could tell customers:
"I'm building a 24H rear wheel, and I think a 4-6 configuration
has better balance than 4-4, so I'll do 4-6.
It will end up as 'within' lacing though,
so please don't mind the ugly appearance."
I can't do that, so I build 24H 4-6 Italian as right-drop (laughs).
The whole concept of right-drop or left-drop exists
to ensure "between" lacing in the first place,
so bringing up examples that abandon that seems wrong to me.
The absolute prerequisite is doing "between" lacing,
and then (in my case) ideally Italian lacing on top of that.
I'm doing a mock build of a 24H rear wheel.
I've threaded spokes through the freewheel side only, 4 spokes at a time.
"When the valve hole is at the top, the spoke coming out of the hole to its left
emerges from the near flange—that rim hole orientation"
is what I call "normal rim" in this blog.
This orientation is by far the most common.
Exceptions exist with Campagnolo, Fulcrum, Colima, etc.,
which I call "reverse rim."
I built this as normal rim orientation.
Since the Nu-spoke is heading toward porcupine direction,
depending on how I lace the non-freewheel side, Italian or JIS lacing are possible,
but reverse Italian and reverse JIS won't work.
I threaded the spokes with right-drop,
and laced just 2 sets of 4 spokes in a 6-spoke JIS pattern.
It's "within" lacing.
Ugh! So ugly!
↑I marked a blue line in that state.
This blue mark means "don't pull spokes in this slot direction."
↑This is what that means.
I re-threaded the 4 non-freewheel side spokes so that
they remain in the same holes but become Italian lacing.
Of course the spoke direction changes too.
↑I'm not pulling spokes in the blue mark direction.
I then threaded the remaining non-freewheel spokes as well.
Now it's properly "between" laced.
It's Italian lacing.
Once more, just to be sure.
I hope you understand that switching right-drop/left-drop converts between
JIS/Italian lacing, and also reverses whether spokes pull in the slot direction.
In this case, I determined that right-drop 4-6 Italian lacing
happens to work well with the slot direction,
but what if it had been inconvenient? I'll explain that too.
Solution 1: "Do 4-4 lacing" → Well, that's obvious.
You get "between" lacing while keeping Italian lacing.
Let me think about the conditions that flip between "between" and "within":
First is "change between right-drop and left-drop."
Second is "make the left and right flange spoke counts
a combination of (odd×2) and (even×2) lacing."
2-spoke lacing causes the Nu-spoke or anti-Nu-spoke to weave together,
which has many problems, so I exclude it.
Limiting to 4-spoke or higher, there's 4-10, 6-8, 8-8, etc.,
but in practice it's almost exclusively 4-6 lacing.
Third, this only works with certain rims, but "treat it as reverse rim."
In the earlier mock build example, the XR300 rim can also be built as reverse rim.
If right-drop 4-6 Italian on normal rim gives "between" lacing
but pulls the slot, treating it as reverse rim instead allows "between" lacing
while pulling the slot in a different direction with the same lacing pattern.
So Solution 2 is rim-dependent:
"build treating it as reverse rim."
The point is: as long as there are ways to solve it without building
an ugly "within" laced wheel, the possibility of "within" lacing
isn't worth a second thought.
If you disagree, why not try building 24H 4-6 Italian as left-drop yourself
with "within" lacing?
Some might say the American Classic slotted hub requires "within" lacing
to avoid the slot, but as long as there are means to avoid it without "within,"
there's no "necessity" about it.
Because the American Classic hub with same-spoke or (odd×2)/(even×2) mixed lacing
would require pulling the slot if done as "between" Italian lacing,
I wrote that it's limited to JIS lacing.
The point was solving it with 4-6 lacing to avoid that.
If 4-6 Italian pulled the slot, I'd have done 4-8 instead.
The rear hub and rim are 28H, so it barely works.
With 28H 4-8 lacing, 700C low-profile rims become
what this blog calls true tangent lacing,
making spoke length possibly unobtainable.
Like this, I think hard about lacing options for each individual wheel,
but each wheel to me is just one of thousands I've built,
yet to a customer, it's 100% of the one wheel they own.
Some customers might not accept "I had to avoid the slot
so it ended up 'within' laced, couldn't think of anything else"—
and more importantly, I wouldn't accept it either.
The thought of one customer's only wheel from me being
an ugly "within" laced mess makes me shudder.
So casually settling for "within" lacing is utterly unthinkable.
If we limit ourselves to "between" lacing as normal, that hub really is
limited to JIS lacing when built straightforwardly.
Finally, let me show a real example where "within" lacing is unavoidable:
With 2:1 spoked hubs like Fulcrum
where 3 spokes from freewheel and non-freewheel sides form one bundle,
if the bundle count is even, "between" lacing is possible.
But with odd bundle counts like 21H,
the valve hole or rim seam risks aligning with a rim hole,
so you need to shift the phase slightly.
↑The rim seam is around the middle of the "G".
↑And so the valve hole appears "within" the spoke bundle.
This is unavoidable.
If I position the valve hole and rim seam
equidistant from the bundle midpoint, the appearance improves somewhat,
but this rim has a wall at the seam and is heavy (→here)
(possibly intentionally for balance)—
the valve hole must be opposite the seam.
Update:
I'm omitting the beginning and end, but
I received a comment saying "~if the delivered wheel had valve hole 'within' lacing,
you'd be very disappointed~"
Exactly! When building an unfamiliar wheel, I really think about a lot of options.
Ideally the best lacing method, or at worst, at least a good lacing method.
To me, including "within" lacing as an option is actually intellectual laziness.
Thank you for the comment.
While I could edit the article text, I prefer to leave things like this as-is
so I'm keeping it unchanged.
Regarding the recent American Classic hub with slotted holes (→here)
I received a comment to the effect of:
"If you're willing to accept having the valve hole within the final crossing bundle,
both JIS and Italian lacing are possible, but..."
And further:
"Isn't the real issue with this hub actually that 'if you avoid the slot and lace it,
there's a possibility the spokes will cross over the valve hole'?"
The concern was about my statement that
"this hub is limited to either JIS or Italian lacing"
They were saying "isn't that a bit off...?"
They're right about that. But the rule that
"the valve hole must be in the gap between crossing bundles, not within the bundle itself"
is extremely important to my wheel building philosophy.
(That's why I poke a screwdriver through the valve hole during the mock build to check)
If I'm going to build an ugly wheel with the valve hole within the crossing bundle,
I'd rather do JIS lacing instead of Italian lacing.
Whether it's same-side or mixed spoke counts, switching between JIS and Italian
reverses the right-drop/left-drop relationship,
but the whole reason I care about right-drop or left-drop in the first place
is to keep the valve hole out of the crossing bundle.
Even if a wheel that says "I avoided the slot and did Italian lacing,
but the valve hole ended up in the crossing bundle" had no performance issues,
I wouldn't want to sell it.
So the idea of "it's fine to have the valve hole in the spoke bundle" never even occurred to me.
That's why I wrote it as "limited to either JIS or Italian"—if the condition
that the valve hole must be in the gap between bundles is met,
then yes, it does work out that way.
For those who think "if I really want either JIS or Italian lacing,
it's okay to have the valve hole within the crossing,"
my wording might be hard to accept.
But I've never built (at least not for sale) a wheel that way,
so to me, this slotted hub really is limited to JIS or Italian lacing.
That's how I expressed it.
Update: Now that I'm back in an environment with
a whiteboard and camera, I'm adding this update.
There may be some overlap in expression with the previous section, but please forgive that.
I'll now refer to the valve hole being within the crossing bundle as "within" (なか),
and being in the gap between bundles as "between" (あいだ).
The slotted American Classic hub mentioned earlier is limited to
JIS or Italian lacing if you maintain the "between" positioning,
but regarding that word "limited"—
I received a comment saying if you do "within" lacing,
both JIS and Italian should be possible, so isn't that "a bit off...?"
I've been excluding ugly "within" laced wheels from my concept of what a wheel should be,
which is why I wrote "limited to JIS or Italian."
If "within" lacing is acceptable, then 4-spoke Italian 24H wheels
could be built left-drop and it would work fine.
I could tell customers:
"I'm building a 24H rear wheel, and I think a 4-6 configuration
has better balance than 4-4, so I'll do 4-6.
It will end up as 'within' lacing though,
so please don't mind the ugly appearance."
I can't do that, so I build 24H 4-6 Italian as right-drop (laughs).
The whole concept of right-drop or left-drop exists
to ensure "between" lacing in the first place,
so bringing up examples that abandon that seems wrong to me.
The absolute prerequisite is doing "between" lacing,
and then (in my case) ideally Italian lacing on top of that.
I'm doing a mock build of a 24H rear wheel.
I've threaded spokes through the freewheel side only, 4 spokes at a time.
"When the valve hole is at the top, the spoke coming out of the hole to its left
emerges from the near flange—that rim hole orientation"
is what I call "normal rim" in this blog.
This orientation is by far the most common.
Exceptions exist with Campagnolo, Fulcrum, Colima, etc.,
which I call "reverse rim."
I built this as normal rim orientation.
Since the Nu-spoke is heading toward porcupine direction,
depending on how I lace the non-freewheel side, Italian or JIS lacing are possible,
but reverse Italian and reverse JIS won't work.
I threaded the spokes with right-drop,
and laced just 2 sets of 4 spokes in a 6-spoke JIS pattern.
It's "within" lacing.
Ugh! So ugly!
↑I marked a blue line in that state.
This blue mark means "don't pull spokes in this slot direction."
↑This is what that means.
I re-threaded the 4 non-freewheel side spokes so that
they remain in the same holes but become Italian lacing.
Of course the spoke direction changes too.
↑I'm not pulling spokes in the blue mark direction.
I then threaded the remaining non-freewheel spokes as well.
Now it's properly "between" laced.
It's Italian lacing.
Once more, just to be sure.
I hope you understand that switching right-drop/left-drop converts between
JIS/Italian lacing, and also reverses whether spokes pull in the slot direction.
In this case, I determined that right-drop 4-6 Italian lacing
happens to work well with the slot direction,
but what if it had been inconvenient? I'll explain that too.
Solution 1: "Do 4-4 lacing" → Well, that's obvious.
You get "between" lacing while keeping Italian lacing.
Let me think about the conditions that flip between "between" and "within":
First is "change between right-drop and left-drop."
Second is "make the left and right flange spoke counts
a combination of (odd×2) and (even×2) lacing."
2-spoke lacing causes the Nu-spoke or anti-Nu-spoke to weave together,
which has many problems, so I exclude it.
Limiting to 4-spoke or higher, there's 4-10, 6-8, 8-8, etc.,
but in practice it's almost exclusively 4-6 lacing.
Third, this only works with certain rims, but "treat it as reverse rim."
In the earlier mock build example, the XR300 rim can also be built as reverse rim.
If right-drop 4-6 Italian on normal rim gives "between" lacing
but pulls the slot, treating it as reverse rim instead allows "between" lacing
while pulling the slot in a different direction with the same lacing pattern.
So Solution 2 is rim-dependent:
"build treating it as reverse rim."
The point is: as long as there are ways to solve it without building
an ugly "within" laced wheel, the possibility of "within" lacing
isn't worth a second thought.
If you disagree, why not try building 24H 4-6 Italian as left-drop yourself
with "within" lacing?
Some might say the American Classic slotted hub requires "within" lacing
to avoid the slot, but as long as there are means to avoid it without "within,"
there's no "necessity" about it.
Because the American Classic hub with same-spoke or (odd×2)/(even×2) mixed lacing
would require pulling the slot if done as "between" Italian lacing,
I wrote that it's limited to JIS lacing.
The point was solving it with 4-6 lacing to avoid that.
If 4-6 Italian pulled the slot, I'd have done 4-8 instead.
The rear hub and rim are 28H, so it barely works.
With 28H 4-8 lacing, 700C low-profile rims become
what this blog calls true tangent lacing,
making spoke length possibly unobtainable.
Like this, I think hard about lacing options for each individual wheel,
but each wheel to me is just one of thousands I've built,
yet to a customer, it's 100% of the one wheel they own.
Some customers might not accept "I had to avoid the slot
so it ended up 'within' laced, couldn't think of anything else"—
and more importantly, I wouldn't accept it either.
The thought of one customer's only wheel from me being
an ugly "within" laced mess makes me shudder.
So casually settling for "within" lacing is utterly unthinkable.
If we limit ourselves to "between" lacing as normal, that hub really is
limited to JIS lacing when built straightforwardly.
Finally, let me show a real example where "within" lacing is unavoidable:
With 2:1 spoked hubs like Fulcrum
where 3 spokes from freewheel and non-freewheel sides form one bundle,
if the bundle count is even, "between" lacing is possible.
But with odd bundle counts like 21H,
the valve hole or rim seam risks aligning with a rim hole,
so you need to shift the phase slightly.
↑The rim seam is around the middle of the "G".
↑And so the valve hole appears "within" the spoke bundle.
This is unavoidable.
If I position the valve hole and rim seam
equidistant from the bundle midpoint, the appearance improves somewhat,
but this rim has a wall at the seam and is heavy (→here)
(possibly intentionally for balance)—
the valve hole must be opposite the seam.
Update:
I'm omitting the beginning and end, but
I received a comment saying "~if the delivered wheel had valve hole 'within' lacing,
you'd be very disappointed~"
Exactly! When building an unfamiliar wheel, I really think about a lot of options.
Ideally the best lacing method, or at worst, at least a good lacing method.
To me, including "within" lacing as an option is actually intellectual laziness.
Thank you for the comment.