I've been waiting a long time for spokes to come in stock, and I finally managed to build up an
88mm high rim (→here).
Before the rebuild it had black spokes,
but now it's silver—that's the customer's preference.
It's a hub that looks like a Rolf hub, 24H, half-Campagnolo lacing with radial spokes on the free side. The free side came out so tight that I almost thought the radial lacing was unnecessary, but I went ahead and did it anyway.
So why did it take so long to do what's usually a routine build in our shop? I'll explain in the next post, but our DT Swiss distributor changed. I'd even bought up a lot of the common spoke lengths from the old distributor's stock, but I burned through it all quickly.
For an 88mm high rim rear wheel, if it's 20H I'd go straight to half-Campagnolo without hesitation, but with 24H I really want to do half-competition lacing instead.
From the shortest available length in silver competition spokes,
I cut out the length needed for this four-spoke free-side build and rolled the threads.
The nipple position ended up in a weird spot.
Even cutting from the shortest available length meant removing 30mm or more,
and as you can see, the threads end up right on the 15-gauge butted section.
So when you turn the 14-gauge nipple...
it just pulls right through the spoke.
Building a wheel this way felt sketchy, but when I discovered that the new DT distributor's shortest competition spoke length was a few millimeters shorter than the old one, I thought maybe I could cut from that length instead... so I went through all the procedures and ordered some to try it out. No luck. Actually, the spoke in the picture above is cut from that shortest length. I was torn between doing a six-spoke build instead or just going with half-Campagnolo, but the customer said full CX-RAY would be fine too. But no—that wouldn't give us the look we're after. So I decided to go with half-Campagnolo anyway even if people say it's "too stiff," but—oh no—my silver Campagnolo 14-gauge stock is down to 2 spokes left. Aargh!
So that's why it took a while to get stable supply sorted.
Lately there are a lot of builds where I've only finished the front wheel and the rear wheel is still sitting there—that's also connected to the DT distributor changeover.
By the way, before the rebuild, this rear wheel was black CX-RAY 40-spoke lacing.
In the picture above, on the inside of the free-side flange, you can see where the outpoke head rested against it.
↑ Inpoke marks on the outside of the free-side flange
↑ The outside of the non-free side is outpoke radial lacing, so no marks show up.
↑ And on the inside of the non-free side, the outpoke radial lacing has such low tension that the head marks are barely visible.
88mm high rim (→here).
Before the rebuild it had black spokes,
but now it's silver—that's the customer's preference.
It's a hub that looks like a Rolf hub, 24H, half-Campagnolo lacing with radial spokes on the free side. The free side came out so tight that I almost thought the radial lacing was unnecessary, but I went ahead and did it anyway.
So why did it take so long to do what's usually a routine build in our shop? I'll explain in the next post, but our DT Swiss distributor changed. I'd even bought up a lot of the common spoke lengths from the old distributor's stock, but I burned through it all quickly.
For an 88mm high rim rear wheel, if it's 20H I'd go straight to half-Campagnolo without hesitation, but with 24H I really want to do half-competition lacing instead.
From the shortest available length in silver competition spokes,
I cut out the length needed for this four-spoke free-side build and rolled the threads.
The nipple position ended up in a weird spot.
Even cutting from the shortest available length meant removing 30mm or more,
and as you can see, the threads end up right on the 15-gauge butted section.
So when you turn the 14-gauge nipple...
it just pulls right through the spoke.
Building a wheel this way felt sketchy, but when I discovered that the new DT distributor's shortest competition spoke length was a few millimeters shorter than the old one, I thought maybe I could cut from that length instead... so I went through all the procedures and ordered some to try it out. No luck. Actually, the spoke in the picture above is cut from that shortest length. I was torn between doing a six-spoke build instead or just going with half-Campagnolo, but the customer said full CX-RAY would be fine too. But no—that wouldn't give us the look we're after. So I decided to go with half-Campagnolo anyway even if people say it's "too stiff," but—oh no—my silver Campagnolo 14-gauge stock is down to 2 spokes left. Aargh!
So that's why it took a while to get stable supply sorted.
Lately there are a lot of builds where I've only finished the front wheel and the rear wheel is still sitting there—that's also connected to the DT distributor changeover.
By the way, before the rebuild, this rear wheel was black CX-RAY 40-spoke lacing.
In the picture above, on the inside of the free-side flange, you can see where the outpoke head rested against it.
↑ Inpoke marks on the outside of the free-side flange
↑ The outside of the non-free side is outpoke radial lacing, so no marks show up.
↑ And on the inside of the non-free side, the outpoke radial lacing has such low tension that the head marks are barely visible.