Another day of wheelbuilding (and so on).
But first, a note.
At our shop, when building wheels with Powertap hubs, we've been performing
"overhauls involving cartridge bearing extraction from the hub shell" and
"replacing the half-hearted tape wrapped around the shaft magnet
with heat shrink tubing"—
but we've received a request from Kirschwerk Inc. (German power meter hub manufacturer)
to discontinue both of these practices,
so going forward we won't be doing them.
We apologize for any inconvenience, and appreciate your understanding.
During our correspondence about this,
I asked several questions like
"what exactly is okay to do?" and
"for example, is this safe?"
and they confirmed that greasing without bearing extraction is fine
(if bearing replacement is needed,
we'll need to send it to Kirschwerk).
Also, they said there are no particular restrictions on solder connections for the wiring.
On top of that, we received several useful tips about building wheels with Powertap hubs,
which I plan to apply to future builds.
One of those was that under certain conditions, when thinking dynamically,
reverse Italian lacing is recommended—
I was curious about this, so I paused the Powertap hub wheel builds
and built some wheels with my personal SL+ hub to
verify various things.
It seems that Wheelbuilder.com's Powertap hub wheels use JIS lacing,
while Wiggle's off-the-shelf Powertap hub wheels use reverse Italian lacing as standard,
and I think I'm starting to see the reasoning behind these choices.
However, regarding the direction of the non-pulling and pulling spokes in tangent lacing,
the manufacturer has no specific designation, so
I'll continue with Italian lacing going forward (for rim-brake wheels).
That said, if a customer requests it, I'm happy to build wheels in reverse Italian
or JIS lacing—just let me know your preference.
Another day of wheelbuilding (and so on).
A customer dropped off a Powertap G3 hub with us.
This one's brand new, so there's nothing special to do.
I'm building Nomulab wheel #5 with it.
Built.
24H, semi-competition 24x Italian lacing with wiring.
It was a long road getting here...
I used up quite a bit of my "self-proclaimed Obon holidays" too.
Built the front wheel too.
Leaf hub 20H CX-RAY non-pulling spoke radial lacing.
But first, a note.
At our shop, when building wheels with Powertap hubs, we've been performing
"overhauls involving cartridge bearing extraction from the hub shell" and
"replacing the half-hearted tape wrapped around the shaft magnet
with heat shrink tubing"—
but we've received a request from Kirschwerk Inc. (German power meter hub manufacturer)
to discontinue both of these practices,
so going forward we won't be doing them.
We apologize for any inconvenience, and appreciate your understanding.
During our correspondence about this,
I asked several questions like
"what exactly is okay to do?" and
"for example, is this safe?"
and they confirmed that greasing without bearing extraction is fine
(if bearing replacement is needed,
we'll need to send it to Kirschwerk).
Also, they said there are no particular restrictions on solder connections for the wiring.
On top of that, we received several useful tips about building wheels with Powertap hubs,
which I plan to apply to future builds.
One of those was that under certain conditions, when thinking dynamically,
reverse Italian lacing is recommended—
I was curious about this, so I paused the Powertap hub wheel builds
and built some wheels with my personal SL+ hub to
verify various things.
It seems that Wheelbuilder.com's Powertap hub wheels use JIS lacing,
while Wiggle's off-the-shelf Powertap hub wheels use reverse Italian lacing as standard,
and I think I'm starting to see the reasoning behind these choices.
However, regarding the direction of the non-pulling and pulling spokes in tangent lacing,
the manufacturer has no specific designation, so
I'll continue with Italian lacing going forward (for rim-brake wheels).
That said, if a customer requests it, I'm happy to build wheels in reverse Italian
or JIS lacing—just let me know your preference.
Another day of wheelbuilding (and so on).
A customer dropped off a Powertap G3 hub with us.
This one's brand new, so there's nothing special to do.
I'm building Nomulab wheel #5 with it.
Built.
24H, semi-competition 24x Italian lacing with wiring.
It was a long road getting here...
I used up quite a bit of my "self-proclaimed Obon holidays" too.
Built the front wheel too.
Leaf hub 20H CX-RAY non-pulling spoke radial lacing.