While it takes about as much effort as building a whole wheel,
today's work wouldn't normally be recognized as such.
A customer brought in a rear wheel
built with an FH-CX75 hub and
a Stan's Iron Cross rim.
This was one we'd built here long ago.
The sticker's red color has faded nicely.
This rim is a lightweight cyclocross rim
with a maximum pressure of 3.1 bar,
and before getting this worn in,
it's common to bend the bead hook through buckling,
but this rim showed no deformation.
One inpoke had broken at the neck.
This wasn't simple fatigue—
a chain drop had bent all the inpokes.
Since the FH-CX75 only comes in 28H,
normally I'd just need to
replace the seven inpokes, but—
the chain drop damage was severe,
and several outpokes were also bent,
so I ended up doing a complete replacement of the freewheel-side spokes.
If we're replacing everything anyway,
I asked: should we reverse the directions—
inpoke/hedgehog direction and
outpoke/reverse-hedgehog direction?
In other words, switching from the current JIS lacing
to reverse Italian lacing would theoretically be less ideal
for wheel mechanics, but it would create
spoke geometry more resistant to chain drop damage.
What would you like?
The customer said reverse Italian lacing sounded good, but
while I was getting spokes ready,
they decided: actually, let's keep it JIS lacing as is!
By the way, an example of when I've
gone with reverse Italian for this reason is (→here)
It's built.
Same as before: FH-CX75 28H,
half-comp four-cross JIS lacing with tangent crossings.
The non-freewheel (left) side spokes stayed as they were,
with only the freewheel side completely replaced.
This meant that for most of the wheel building,
the rim was offset toward the non-freewheel side,
requiring final centering through tension increases on the high side—
the reverse of normal wheel building.
Since I'm not used to that approach,
the work was a bit awkward, truth be told.
today's work wouldn't normally be recognized as such.
A customer brought in a rear wheel
built with an FH-CX75 hub and
a Stan's Iron Cross rim.
This was one we'd built here long ago.
The sticker's red color has faded nicely.
This rim is a lightweight cyclocross rim
with a maximum pressure of 3.1 bar,
and before getting this worn in,
it's common to bend the bead hook through buckling,
but this rim showed no deformation.
One inpoke had broken at the neck.
This wasn't simple fatigue—
a chain drop had bent all the inpokes.
Since the FH-CX75 only comes in 28H,
normally I'd just need to
replace the seven inpokes, but—
the chain drop damage was severe,
and several outpokes were also bent,
so I ended up doing a complete replacement of the freewheel-side spokes.
If we're replacing everything anyway,
I asked: should we reverse the directions—
inpoke/hedgehog direction and
outpoke/reverse-hedgehog direction?
In other words, switching from the current JIS lacing
to reverse Italian lacing would theoretically be less ideal
for wheel mechanics, but it would create
spoke geometry more resistant to chain drop damage.
What would you like?
The customer said reverse Italian lacing sounded good, but
while I was getting spokes ready,
they decided: actually, let's keep it JIS lacing as is!
By the way, an example of when I've
gone with reverse Italian for this reason is (→here)
It's built.
Same as before: FH-CX75 28H,
half-comp four-cross JIS lacing with tangent crossings.
The non-freewheel (left) side spokes stayed as they were,
with only the freewheel side completely replaced.
This meant that for most of the wheel building,
the rim was offset toward the non-freewheel side,
requiring final centering through tension increases on the high side—
the reverse of normal wheel building.
Since I'm not used to that approach,
the work was a bit awkward, truth be told.