I'm always writing about wheels and various other things here,
and while I slip in some cold jokes (like the title of this article),
it seems many people are viewing me favorably, which is really encouraging.
But there are many things I can't write about here, things I choose not to write about.
My exclusive knowledge, so to speak—my meal ticket.
I intend to never touch on those matters,
though I may be unconsciously leaking some information.
Ah, the W freehub definitely touches on that.
Well, whatever. Nobody's gonna copy it anyway.
Today I'm consciously writing about my meal ticket for the first time.
And even though I'm putting on airs like that, if someone says "I already knew that" or "it's obvious if you think about it,"
well, then I'll just be embarrassed.
The topic is 4-6 lacing.
When you attempt 4-6 lacing for the first time, you'll probably fail.
If you could spot the pitfalls of 4-6 lacing and handle them on your first try,
I'd say you're pretty impressive.
↑I can't decipher this scribble now. Please ignore it.
With hubs that have the model name written on the hub shell,
except for a few exceptions (like White Industries the other day),
we lace them so the name is readable when facing the direction of travel.
In the diagram, if the right side is the direction of travel,
the flange that's in front from my perspective becomes the right side when viewed from the direction of travel.
In the diagram above I'm using radial lacing, but that doesn't matter.
I'll draw the spokes coming from the front flange in blue,
and the spokes from the rear flange in red.
Consider the state where the wheel's valve hole is at the top.
The spoke holes in the rim alternate left and right unless it's a deep rim.
If you do radial lacing matching the rim's spoke hole pattern...
↑...this is what happens.
When the valve is at the top, the spoke one position to the right from the valve
comes from the rear flange as seen from my perspective.
This relationship doesn't change even if you flip it like a spinning top while keeping the valve at the top
(in other words, even if you view it from the opposite side).
↑Shot from the side so it's a bit hard to see, but the spoke
to the right of the valve is coming from the rear flange as I see it.
Since most rims have this spoke hole pattern,
I'll call rims with this pattern the "standard rim" from now on.
Not that anything is "correct" per se,
but almost all commercial hand-built rims have this pattern.
I should mention the exceptions. Campagnolo and Fulcrum front wheels,
Mavic Cosmic Carbon Ultimates and other factory-built wheels have many,
but some rims have the opposite hole pattern from standard rims.
In the image above, the spoke to the right of the valve comes from the front flange as I see it.
I'll call rims like this the "reverse rim" from now on.
With radial lacing, whether it's a standard rim or reverse rim,
there's nothing particularly difficult if you pay attention to the hole pattern.
But with tangent lacing, that's not the case.
↑The 4 spokes shown in the image form one unit
of tangent lacing. If you have 5 of these units it's 20H, 6 units is 24H, 7 units is 28H, and so on.
When this group of 4 spokes spans across the valve hole, it looks really ugly.
To show it in a diagram...
↑This is fine, but
↑This is not okay.
How do you lace with tangent lacing (Italian or JIS) while keeping the group of 4 spokes from spanning the valve hole?
When building a wheel, you first thread spokes through the hub,
One spoke, threaded from top to bottom.
When the spoke hangs parallel to the hub axle,
the spoke holes on the opposite flange are phase-shifted.
At this point, you drop the spoke to the left.
This is called a left drop.
After that, you alternate with radial and tangent spokes.
If you then do Italian lacing, the group of 4 spokes won't span the valve hole.
Left drop is for Italian lacing—this is fundamental.
If you do JIS lacing with a left drop, you get valve hole spanning.
If you do JIS lacing with a right drop, you won't get valve hole spanning.
If you do Italian lacing with a right drop, you get valve hole spanning.
Right drop is for JIS lacing.
Now here's the important part:
Left drop Italian and right drop JIS only apply to standard rims.
Since most hand-built rims are standard rims, I think many people haven't noticed this.
When doing tangent lacing on a reverse rim, the phase shifts by one,
so it becomes right drop Italian and left drop JIS.
Specifically, some earlier Colima rims were reverse rims (they're different now).
There's a possibility of ordering 24H rims and hand-building them,
so if you don't know about this, you'll fall into the trap.
Now we get to the meal ticket section.
I've diagrammed 4-spoke, 6-spoke, and 8-spoke units respectively.
Divide the spoke holes in half with a line passing through the spoke crossing point and the hub axle.
That's the dotted line in the diagram above.
Write down the number of spoke holes on one side of the dotted line.
4-spoke is 2H, 6-spoke is 3H, 8-spoke is 4H.
What matters is
whether that number is even or odd.
When combining evens or odds, on a standard rim you can lace with left drop Italian.
With normal lacing like 4-4, 6-6, 8-8, there are no issues.
With 4-6 or 6-8 lacing, the pattern of radial and tangent spokes on one flange becomes phase-shifted relative to the other,
so on a standard rim it becomes right drop Italian.
In other words, if you're doing 4-6 lacing with Italian lacing,
you have to lace with a right drop.
Yes, this one's gonna be on the test.
Even though it's my meal ticket, I thought that shops or individuals who see this blog
and attempt 4-6 lacing would probably stumble right here, so I wrote about it.
Since the vast majority of people won't ever build wheels with 4-6 lacing,
it's not particularly valuable information for them, so I thought it was okay to make it public.
Let me give you a concrete example.
20H
is 4-4 lacing. The radial spokes on both sides point backward
in the top half of the wheel (porcupine direction), so this is Italian lacing.
Following along the spoke that was dropped through, I lower one spoke
and check which way it's threaded relative to the hub flange hole pattern...
↑It's a left drop. Left drop Italian.
Next, 24H.
↑This is 4-6 laced Italian,
↑but it's a right drop.
4-6 lacing becomes right drop Italian.
So if you did 4-6 lacing on a reverse rim?
The opposite of the opposite is the same, so reverse rim Italian would be left drop.
If on a standard rim you wanted to do Italian lacing on the non-drive side with 10-spoke lacing (total 40H),
and the drive side was 6-spoke, it would be left drop, but with 4-spoke and 8-spoke it would be right drop.
Are you starting to get the picture?
↑And that's the scribble from the beginning.
If any of you who've deciphered it differently than before are wheel builders,
please definitely try 4-6 lacing.
and while I slip in some cold jokes (like the title of this article),
it seems many people are viewing me favorably, which is really encouraging.
But there are many things I can't write about here, things I choose not to write about.
My exclusive knowledge, so to speak—my meal ticket.
I intend to never touch on those matters,
though I may be unconsciously leaking some information.
Ah, the W freehub definitely touches on that.
Well, whatever. Nobody's gonna copy it anyway.
Today I'm consciously writing about my meal ticket for the first time.
And even though I'm putting on airs like that, if someone says "I already knew that" or "it's obvious if you think about it,"
well, then I'll just be embarrassed.
The topic is 4-6 lacing.
When you attempt 4-6 lacing for the first time, you'll probably fail.
If you could spot the pitfalls of 4-6 lacing and handle them on your first try,
I'd say you're pretty impressive.
↑I can't decipher this scribble now. Please ignore it.
With hubs that have the model name written on the hub shell,
except for a few exceptions (like White Industries the other day),
we lace them so the name is readable when facing the direction of travel.
In the diagram, if the right side is the direction of travel,
the flange that's in front from my perspective becomes the right side when viewed from the direction of travel.
In the diagram above I'm using radial lacing, but that doesn't matter.
I'll draw the spokes coming from the front flange in blue,
and the spokes from the rear flange in red.
Consider the state where the wheel's valve hole is at the top.
The spoke holes in the rim alternate left and right unless it's a deep rim.
If you do radial lacing matching the rim's spoke hole pattern...
↑...this is what happens.
When the valve is at the top, the spoke one position to the right from the valve
comes from the rear flange as seen from my perspective.
This relationship doesn't change even if you flip it like a spinning top while keeping the valve at the top
(in other words, even if you view it from the opposite side).
↑Shot from the side so it's a bit hard to see, but the spoke
to the right of the valve is coming from the rear flange as I see it.
Since most rims have this spoke hole pattern,
I'll call rims with this pattern the "standard rim" from now on.
Not that anything is "correct" per se,
but almost all commercial hand-built rims have this pattern.
I should mention the exceptions. Campagnolo and Fulcrum front wheels,
Mavic Cosmic Carbon Ultimates and other factory-built wheels have many,
but some rims have the opposite hole pattern from standard rims.
In the image above, the spoke to the right of the valve comes from the front flange as I see it.
I'll call rims like this the "reverse rim" from now on.
With radial lacing, whether it's a standard rim or reverse rim,
there's nothing particularly difficult if you pay attention to the hole pattern.
But with tangent lacing, that's not the case.
↑The 4 spokes shown in the image form one unit
of tangent lacing. If you have 5 of these units it's 20H, 6 units is 24H, 7 units is 28H, and so on.
When this group of 4 spokes spans across the valve hole, it looks really ugly.
To show it in a diagram...
↑This is fine, but
↑This is not okay.
How do you lace with tangent lacing (Italian or JIS) while keeping the group of 4 spokes from spanning the valve hole?
When building a wheel, you first thread spokes through the hub,
One spoke, threaded from top to bottom.
When the spoke hangs parallel to the hub axle,
the spoke holes on the opposite flange are phase-shifted.
At this point, you drop the spoke to the left.
This is called a left drop.
After that, you alternate with radial and tangent spokes.
If you then do Italian lacing, the group of 4 spokes won't span the valve hole.
Left drop is for Italian lacing—this is fundamental.
If you do JIS lacing with a left drop, you get valve hole spanning.
If you do JIS lacing with a right drop, you won't get valve hole spanning.
If you do Italian lacing with a right drop, you get valve hole spanning.
Right drop is for JIS lacing.
Now here's the important part:
Left drop Italian and right drop JIS only apply to standard rims.
Since most hand-built rims are standard rims, I think many people haven't noticed this.
When doing tangent lacing on a reverse rim, the phase shifts by one,
so it becomes right drop Italian and left drop JIS.
Specifically, some earlier Colima rims were reverse rims (they're different now).
There's a possibility of ordering 24H rims and hand-building them,
so if you don't know about this, you'll fall into the trap.
Now we get to the meal ticket section.
I've diagrammed 4-spoke, 6-spoke, and 8-spoke units respectively.
Divide the spoke holes in half with a line passing through the spoke crossing point and the hub axle.
That's the dotted line in the diagram above.
Write down the number of spoke holes on one side of the dotted line.
4-spoke is 2H, 6-spoke is 3H, 8-spoke is 4H.
What matters is
whether that number is even or odd.
When combining evens or odds, on a standard rim you can lace with left drop Italian.
With normal lacing like 4-4, 6-6, 8-8, there are no issues.
With 4-6 or 6-8 lacing, the pattern of radial and tangent spokes on one flange becomes phase-shifted relative to the other,
so on a standard rim it becomes right drop Italian.
In other words, if you're doing 4-6 lacing with Italian lacing,
you have to lace with a right drop.
Yes, this one's gonna be on the test.
Even though it's my meal ticket, I thought that shops or individuals who see this blog
and attempt 4-6 lacing would probably stumble right here, so I wrote about it.
Since the vast majority of people won't ever build wheels with 4-6 lacing,
it's not particularly valuable information for them, so I thought it was okay to make it public.
Let me give you a concrete example.
20H
is 4-4 lacing. The radial spokes on both sides point backward
in the top half of the wheel (porcupine direction), so this is Italian lacing.
Following along the spoke that was dropped through, I lower one spoke
and check which way it's threaded relative to the hub flange hole pattern...
↑It's a left drop. Left drop Italian.
Next, 24H.
↑This is 4-6 laced Italian,
↑but it's a right drop.
4-6 lacing becomes right drop Italian.
So if you did 4-6 lacing on a reverse rim?
The opposite of the opposite is the same, so reverse rim Italian would be left drop.
If on a standard rim you wanted to do Italian lacing on the non-drive side with 10-spoke lacing (total 40H),
and the drive side was 6-spoke, it would be left drop, but with 4-spoke and 8-spoke it would be right drop.
Are you starting to get the picture?
↑And that's the scribble from the beginning.
If any of you who've deciphered it differently than before are wheel builders,
please definitely try 4-6 lacing.