Another day of wheel work (and so on).
I built a fixed gear front wheel using Araya's R-50 rim.
The back is a bit of a mess because
I haven't had time to work through the rims that came in stock.
The surface finish color is black anodized.
Besides this, the R-50 rim also comes in
a hard anodized finish (the usual hard anodize color),
but this time I went with the black rim.
The hub is a Shimano Tourney large flange fixed gear hub at 36H,
and I went with Sapim black race spokes in an 88-spoke Italian lacing pattern with crosses.
I didn't use DT Competition spokes because
even at the longest domestic stock length of 303mm,
that wasn't long enough for the 8-cross pattern.
Sapim race spokes go up to 306mm.
I did full cross-lacing at 18 points on both sides,
but that's taking longer than the actual wheel building.
While the 36H hub is NJS certified,
the spokes for this wheel aren't NJS certified in the first place
and obviously aren't meant for track racing, so I used Italian lacing.
Both Sapim race and DT Competition are 2.0-1.8-2.0mm butted round spokes,
but with race spokes the 1.8mm section is longer,
and they're noticeably lighter than Competition—you can see it in the spoke weight figures.
However, Competition has a larger adjustment range when re-cutting for reuse and
is more consistently available, so
at our shop we mainly use Competition
(though that's been the case since we first opened).
I built a fixed gear front wheel using Araya's R-50 rim.
The back is a bit of a mess because
I haven't had time to work through the rims that came in stock.
The surface finish color is black anodized.
Besides this, the R-50 rim also comes in
a hard anodized finish (the usual hard anodize color),
but this time I went with the black rim.
The hub is a Shimano Tourney large flange fixed gear hub at 36H,
and I went with Sapim black race spokes in an 88-spoke Italian lacing pattern with crosses.
I didn't use DT Competition spokes because
even at the longest domestic stock length of 303mm,
that wasn't long enough for the 8-cross pattern.
Sapim race spokes go up to 306mm.
I did full cross-lacing at 18 points on both sides,
but that's taking longer than the actual wheel building.
While the 36H hub is NJS certified,
the spokes for this wheel aren't NJS certified in the first place
and obviously aren't meant for track racing, so I used Italian lacing.
Both Sapim race and DT Competition are 2.0-1.8-2.0mm butted round spokes,
but with race spokes the 1.8mm section is longer,
and they're noticeably lighter than Competition—you can see it in the spoke weight figures.
However, Competition has a larger adjustment range when re-cutting for reuse and
is more consistently available, so
at our shop we mainly use Competition
(though that's been the case since we first opened).