Another wheel day (et cetera).
I'd been holding onto a front wheel built with a 1-45 rim that a customer left with me.
For nine months.
Before that, CX Sprint spokes were out of stock,
so I couldn't build the next wheel.
To be precise, when I first took this wheel in,
there was actually CX Sprint inventory available.
But working through orders in sequence, by the time this wheel's turn came around,
I'd run short on spokes.
PowerTap front hub, 20H
Black CX-RAY outpoke radial lacing.
It's hard to imagine using only a PowerTap front hub when not building rear wheels with PowerTap hubs,
so the 24H rim I took in the other day might have been built as a rear wheel with a PowerTap hub.
The rim's serial number was on the younger side—six digits (100,000 range)—so there was a chance it could be an EDGE brand rather than ENVE,
but I can say with certainty this rim is an ENVE brand piece.
Unlike the 24H rim from before, which had its sticker completely peeled off,
this rim still had an ENVE sticker remaining
around the valve hole.
Just like the 24H rim, again there was heat warping
only next to the air valve removal plug cap
at the phase opposite the valve hole.
You might say it's just coincidence,
but
it really only appears in this spot.
Finally got the next wheel built.
Novatec D791-ish hub, 20H
All-black CX Sprint 4-4 reverse Italian lacing.
I'll do the tie-in/tie-down later.
Though it's a hub with equal-diameter flanges on both sides,
it has more offset than a single-sided fixed-gear rear hub,
so when I built it with identical diameter and spoke count both sides, the non-rotor-bracket side
definitely ended up with notably lower tension.
I looked up the spoke trajectory for a true tangent 20H build with six spokes per side,
and even with this large flange, the outpoke head overlaps the inpoke trajectory,
so I've ruled out 4-2 lacing.
I didn't go with half CX Sprint
(I didn't use CX-RAY on the rotor-bracket side)
because I had various thoughts about it,
but figured if both sides might need tie-in/tie-down, why not go all CX Sprint
(looks like I can manage with just one side).
I'm building the rear wheel with silver spokes for a rim-brake setup
and the front wheel with black spokes for a disc-brake setup—
naturally these are for two different bikes.
If it were just the rear wheel, it'd be half-comp and would've been built sooner,
but I was planning to build both front and rear once CX Sprint arrived.
I didn't anticipate the restock taking this long.
For this 20H front wheel, building it entirely in CX-RAY would be
—even with tie-in/tie-down on both sides—
(not that it'd be completely unusable as a wheel)
pretty rough on stiffness, I suspect.
As for the front hub,
it's definitely Novatec, but it's unbranded.
It's almost identical to the D791, but the decisive difference is
it's not a high-low flange setup.
For details (→here).
In that article, I did a trial build of a 20H hub with six spokes per side on the D791's small-flange side,
but even with the larger flange on this hub,
I got pretty much the same result—it just doesn't work.
I'd been holding onto a front wheel built with a 1-45 rim that a customer left with me.
For nine months.
Before that, CX Sprint spokes were out of stock,
so I couldn't build the next wheel.
To be precise, when I first took this wheel in,
there was actually CX Sprint inventory available.
But working through orders in sequence, by the time this wheel's turn came around,
I'd run short on spokes.
PowerTap front hub, 20H
Black CX-RAY outpoke radial lacing.
It's hard to imagine using only a PowerTap front hub when not building rear wheels with PowerTap hubs,
so the 24H rim I took in the other day might have been built as a rear wheel with a PowerTap hub.
The rim's serial number was on the younger side—six digits (100,000 range)—so there was a chance it could be an EDGE brand rather than ENVE,
but I can say with certainty this rim is an ENVE brand piece.
Unlike the 24H rim from before, which had its sticker completely peeled off,
this rim still had an ENVE sticker remaining
around the valve hole.
Just like the 24H rim, again there was heat warping
only next to the air valve removal plug cap
at the phase opposite the valve hole.
You might say it's just coincidence,
but
it really only appears in this spot.
Finally got the next wheel built.
Novatec D791-ish hub, 20H
All-black CX Sprint 4-4 reverse Italian lacing.
I'll do the tie-in/tie-down later.
Though it's a hub with equal-diameter flanges on both sides,
it has more offset than a single-sided fixed-gear rear hub,
so when I built it with identical diameter and spoke count both sides, the non-rotor-bracket side
definitely ended up with notably lower tension.
I looked up the spoke trajectory for a true tangent 20H build with six spokes per side,
and even with this large flange, the outpoke head overlaps the inpoke trajectory,
so I've ruled out 4-2 lacing.
I didn't go with half CX Sprint
(I didn't use CX-RAY on the rotor-bracket side)
because I had various thoughts about it,
but figured if both sides might need tie-in/tie-down, why not go all CX Sprint
(looks like I can manage with just one side).
I'm building the rear wheel with silver spokes for a rim-brake setup
and the front wheel with black spokes for a disc-brake setup—
naturally these are for two different bikes.
If it were just the rear wheel, it'd be half-comp and would've been built sooner,
but I was planning to build both front and rear once CX Sprint arrived.
I didn't anticipate the restock taking this long.
For this 20H front wheel, building it entirely in CX-RAY would be
—even with tie-in/tie-down on both sides—
(not that it'd be completely unusable as a wheel)
pretty rough on stiffness, I suspect.
As for the front hub,
it's definitely Novatec, but it's unbranded.
It's almost identical to the D791, but the decisive difference is
it's not a high-low flange setup.
For details (→here).
In that article, I did a trial build of a 20H hub with six spokes per side on the D791's small-flange side,
but even with the larger flange on this hub,
I got pretty much the same result—it just doesn't work.