Continuing from yesterday
today is also wheel... (etc.). No, it's not.
The wheel I built yesterday (before),
same component setup but
I rebuilt it (after).
What's different is
I stopped lacing the final cross.
After building the wheel yesterday,
when I squeezed the spokes on the left side (rotor mount side)
on the high tension side (strictly speaking, the side with less deformation),
and even though they're silver spokes,
the final cross made a creaking sound.
The CX-RAY on the right side
deflects more when squeezed,
but no noise occurs.
The mysterious spokes of unknown manufacturer on the left side
have a square aero shape, so
the final cross becomes more of a surface contact than a line contact,
which should be a condition less prone to noise, but
whether the surface is rough or something else,
it reproducibly creaks 100% of the time.
If I handed it to the customer in that state,
they might say things like "there's an awful noise coming from the front wheel when I'm standing on the pedals,"
and if it were me, I'd rebuild it for free without the final cross lacing,
so I figured I should do that now
and rebuilt it.
In the case of J-bend spokes, if you lace a tangent pattern without the final cross weaving (← lacing), various issues arise like loosening, but with straight spokes, like many factory-built wheels, if you apply threadlocker and tension to a reasonable level or above,
loosening-related problems hardly occur.
Other issue #1 is
that if you don't lace the freewheel side,
the chance of hitting the rear derailleur pulley cage
increases,
and issue #2 is that the wheel's deformation from twisting
is greater without lacing than with it,
at least at low tension, so
since we're further tensioning from there respectively,
even at high tension observation is difficult, but
the same tendency likely persists.
As for issue #1, with a straight spoke setup
the spoke position is well inside of the freewheel body,
so even if built with 14 plain spokes,
spoke-to-derailleur contact won't happen.
Issue #2 is precisely the reason I laced the final cross, but
if it creaks that much,
I chose avoiding unnecessary trouble over
that kind of perfectionism.
The wheel itself was built in reverse dish for some reason, which I rebuilt with positive dish with a larger spoke weight difference side-to-side than before,
so it turned out quite nice.
Added note:
I received a comment asking why not just tie in the spokes with spoke ends (結線)?
The customer requested no spoke end ties,
so I couldn't do that.
There was also a comment asking whether the CX-RAY on the right side could have been left as-is since there's no noise,
but Prime rear wheels and such
have examples where the high tension side freewheel side is laced and
the low tension side non-freewheel side isn't
(being the non-freewheel side, there's no derailleur interference issue)
and if I build a wheel doing the opposite of that,
later someone might think
"why is only the low tension side laced on this wheel—
that doesn't make sense,"
so I made it a wheel with no final cross lacing on either side.
I was planning to write this when I get to the rear wheel, but
I plan to lace the final cross only on the freewheel side for the CX Sprint.
today is also wheel... (etc.). No, it's not.
The wheel I built yesterday (before),
same component setup but
I rebuilt it (after).
What's different is
I stopped lacing the final cross.
After building the wheel yesterday,
when I squeezed the spokes on the left side (rotor mount side)
on the high tension side (strictly speaking, the side with less deformation),
and even though they're silver spokes,
the final cross made a creaking sound.
The CX-RAY on the right side
deflects more when squeezed,
but no noise occurs.
The mysterious spokes of unknown manufacturer on the left side
have a square aero shape, so
the final cross becomes more of a surface contact than a line contact,
which should be a condition less prone to noise, but
whether the surface is rough or something else,
it reproducibly creaks 100% of the time.
If I handed it to the customer in that state,
they might say things like "there's an awful noise coming from the front wheel when I'm standing on the pedals,"
and if it were me, I'd rebuild it for free without the final cross lacing,
so I figured I should do that now
and rebuilt it.
In the case of J-bend spokes, if you lace a tangent pattern without the final cross weaving (← lacing), various issues arise like loosening, but with straight spokes, like many factory-built wheels, if you apply threadlocker and tension to a reasonable level or above,
loosening-related problems hardly occur.
Other issue #1 is
that if you don't lace the freewheel side,
the chance of hitting the rear derailleur pulley cage
increases,
and issue #2 is that the wheel's deformation from twisting
is greater without lacing than with it,
at least at low tension, so
since we're further tensioning from there respectively,
even at high tension observation is difficult, but
the same tendency likely persists.
As for issue #1, with a straight spoke setup
the spoke position is well inside of the freewheel body,
so even if built with 14 plain spokes,
spoke-to-derailleur contact won't happen.
Issue #2 is precisely the reason I laced the final cross, but
if it creaks that much,
I chose avoiding unnecessary trouble over
that kind of perfectionism.
The wheel itself was built in reverse dish for some reason, which I rebuilt with positive dish with a larger spoke weight difference side-to-side than before,
so it turned out quite nice.
Added note:
I received a comment asking why not just tie in the spokes with spoke ends (結線)?
The customer requested no spoke end ties,
so I couldn't do that.
There was also a comment asking whether the CX-RAY on the right side could have been left as-is since there's no noise,
but Prime rear wheels and such
have examples where the high tension side freewheel side is laced and
the low tension side non-freewheel side isn't
(being the non-freewheel side, there's no derailleur interference issue)
and if I build a wheel doing the opposite of that,
later someone might think
"why is only the low tension side laced on this wheel—
that doesn't make sense,"
so I made it a wheel with no final cross lacing on either side.
I was planning to write this when I get to the rear wheel, but
I plan to lace the final cross only on the freewheel side for the CX Sprint.