Bicycle Mechanics - spokes

hello, i've just bought a new front hub on ebay, I've identified the rim i'd like to buy but haven't got a clue about spokes. I can't find many places that sell them and those that do don't seem to specify lenth which I'm lead to believe is kind of important. All suggestions welcome.

Check out sheldon brown's web site he has a great how-to on lacing up wheels and links to spoke calculators, which will give you the length you need.

Now where to buy spokes.. nashbar.. LBS.. thorusa.. biketoolsetc.. aebike umm.. icyclesusa quite a few places out their.. don't forget the nipples also.

When you buy the rims, you can ask for the proper spoke length for your hubs. Assuming the hubs and rims aren't very exotic, I'd assume most dealers would have a spoke lengtj charts for more popular combinations. Also, as the previous poster said, there are spoke calculators available.

Spokes should be pretty easy to get. See the following for examples:

http://www.jensonusa.com/store/sub/352-Spokes+And+Nipples.aspx
http://www.universalcycles.com/shopping/index.php?category=779

The best price I've found for individual spokes is oddsandendos.com and I use SpoCalc http://www.damonrinard.com/spocalc.htm for doing spoke length calculations.

Read over the Spocalc website, and it will describe all the measurements involved, and how to make them. Carefully measure your hub and rim (or lookup their measurements from the supplier's website or from the spocalc database), then run the numbers, and get your spokes in the right lenght, plus or minus a mm. If you aren't comfortable making the measurements, you may not be ready to build wheels, but its not hard. :)

peace,
sam

spocalc is a very nice calculator, i use that always. You need to figure out the Effective Rim Diameter of the rims you will be using and various measurements of the hub. luckily, DT swiss has a good database