Another day of wheel building (and so on).
I received an Araya ADX-5
tubular rim from a customer.
There's still a faint trace of rim cement residue,
but I don't think it weighs less than 305g.
If this rim came from an early production batch and ended up on the lighter side,
around 278g might be possible, but more than 300g
is actually easier to build because you don't have to worry as much about spoke tension.
Normally this is a fixed gear rim,
and while it's not really suitable for regular road use,
it can technically be built as a road wheel.
The rim sidewalls are tapered,
so brake shoes wear unevenly,
and it's extremely vulnerable to buckling.
I once experienced this coming back from Koya-san—before I'd even reached Kimi Pass—
when the rim developed a crack that lifted the eyelet,
and I could see the blue color of the aluminum nipple
showing through the crack in the rim sidewall.
Since it was the rear wheel, it was fine to ride slowly as long as you didn't mind
a bit of wobble, but it was definitely not ideal.
This rim has a history of rim cement, but no brake marks,
so it's only ever been used on a fixed gear,
and this build is also as a fixed gear wheel.
All built.
HB-7600-F 32H, all CX-RAY, radial lacing.
This hub is only certified for track use with 36H,
so there's an NJS stamp at the center of the hub body
which serves as the left-right reference,
but with any other spoke count there's no reference at all.
As you increase the number of spokes, you can lower the tension per spoke
for a given stiffness.
So (though neither hubs nor rims like this exist that way),
if this wheel were 20H,
I'd have to tension the spokes much higher.
With this rim at 20H, even building it at what I consider
the bare minimum for a functional wheel,
I think rim holes would crack pretty quickly.
More spokes are gentler on rim holes,
but doing that with radial lacing
creates a tendency for the symptom of
"spoke tension completely drops out and
one spoke gets super loose,"
and the lower the tension, the greater the variation
in tension between spokes, so you'd want to tension it as much as possible,
but this rim won't allow that either—
if I tensioned it like I do with my regular Nomu Lab wheels,
it would crack immediately—
so I need to build this wheel within a very narrow range:
above the lower limit where looseness doesn't develop,
and below the upper limit that's safe for the rim.
I received an Araya ADX-5
tubular rim from a customer.
There's still a faint trace of rim cement residue,
but I don't think it weighs less than 305g.
If this rim came from an early production batch and ended up on the lighter side,
around 278g might be possible, but more than 300g
is actually easier to build because you don't have to worry as much about spoke tension.
Normally this is a fixed gear rim,
and while it's not really suitable for regular road use,
it can technically be built as a road wheel.
The rim sidewalls are tapered,
so brake shoes wear unevenly,
and it's extremely vulnerable to buckling.
I once experienced this coming back from Koya-san—before I'd even reached Kimi Pass—
when the rim developed a crack that lifted the eyelet,
and I could see the blue color of the aluminum nipple
showing through the crack in the rim sidewall.
Since it was the rear wheel, it was fine to ride slowly as long as you didn't mind
a bit of wobble, but it was definitely not ideal.
This rim has a history of rim cement, but no brake marks,
so it's only ever been used on a fixed gear,
and this build is also as a fixed gear wheel.
All built.
HB-7600-F 32H, all CX-RAY, radial lacing.
This hub is only certified for track use with 36H,
so there's an NJS stamp at the center of the hub body
which serves as the left-right reference,
but with any other spoke count there's no reference at all.
As you increase the number of spokes, you can lower the tension per spoke
for a given stiffness.
So (though neither hubs nor rims like this exist that way),
if this wheel were 20H,
I'd have to tension the spokes much higher.
With this rim at 20H, even building it at what I consider
the bare minimum for a functional wheel,
I think rim holes would crack pretty quickly.
More spokes are gentler on rim holes,
but doing that with radial lacing
creates a tendency for the symptom of
"spoke tension completely drops out and
one spoke gets super loose,"
and the lower the tension, the greater the variation
in tension between spokes, so you'd want to tension it as much as possible,
but this rim won't allow that either—
if I tensioned it like I do with my regular Nomu Lab wheels,
it would crack immediately—
so I need to build this wheel within a very narrow range:
above the lower limit where looseness doesn't develop,
and below the upper limit that's safe for the rim.