Originally Posted by
cyccommute
Don’t look at the charts with respect to the tension in a wheel build. That is not what they are for. The amount of force needed to break a spoke is proportional to the durability of the spoke. If it takes more force to break, the spoke will take longer to fatigue and break. From the link I posted in post 7,
Sorry, just following the information you posted. It was unclear to me that I was only allowed to quote a different post.
The point remains, though. Given my own (and some others') experience, another 32% margin for fatigue resistance on top of "doesn't cause me any problem" is unnecessary.
That hasn’t been my experience at all. Not personally and not in a co-op setting nor even here on the Bike Forums. Broken spokes are probably number 3 in questions here behind chains and derailers and they are certainly high on the list of things that get fixed at my local co-op. My issues with spokes breakage covered a lot of time…from the late 80s to early 2000s. My experience is very much in line with Hjertberg’s in that changing to triple butted spokes made the problem go away.
Given the low and uneven spoke tensions I've personally observed on factory built wheels, the fact that some break is irrelevant. Do you have any idea, though, what caused your problems with, for example, 13 gauge straight spokes? Isn't that the butt gauge of your triple butted spokes?