Rear 26" wheel building
 

After reading about lacing rear wheels 4 cross drive side and radial on the other I laced a cheep 36 hole Araya rim to the hub with 14 gauge on the right and 15 gauge on the left in that manner, 252mm long spokes are not common!!!! Had good shop cut and roll the 15s. Wheel looks cool but that won't count for much if this was a bad idear. Sheldon thinks it's ok so what do you think?
BTW Next time I will use butted spokes if its for a 700c wheel.
kev
PS this is about the 25th wheel I have built, previous was a 26 front with disk hub brake using Alpine lll spokes, worked very well after slightly drilling out hub spoke holes.

Although I understand Sheldon's defense of left-radial rear wheels and have seen a similar configuration on Model A's, I am not a fan of radial spoking, front or rear. Radial spokes are very hard on hub flanges. I currently have 36/3X low-flange wheelsets on all four of my bikes and have not broken a spoke in a long time.

John E's opinion is right on the money. If you lost your last money race by tenths of a second, then I understand trying to save every gram. If you want to build something cool with less durability, that's okay too. I have seen broken spokes, broken hub flanges.

Points taken.
All front wheels I have built are at max cross, just tryin to build a rear wheel that doesn't break drive side spokes so often, broke 3 on a 250 mile tour back in 88 and the pita was the club left the truing stand behind, lucky I did have spare spokes and the tools to remove the freewheel, but only at the end of the day. Looking back I should have had more breakin miles on those wheels and I prollly didn't have the wheel tensioned quite enough. My selfesteem takes a hit every time something I built fails in public, not again!!!!
kev
PS the only race Im in is the rat derby.