Originally Posted by
Duragrouch
Regarding reasons for 4X lacing (someone above didn't see value....
As someone whose been building and teaching about wheels for half a century, I can honestly and
politely say that all that followed is BS. To be clear, none of it was technically wrong. It's just that the real world differences are too small to matter.
First of all, the length difference is a few mm out of near 300, so roughly 0.3%. Similar comparisons can be made with all the rest. Based on experience, the biggest difference is with bracing angle, but to get amy benefit you'd need to build dished rear wheels with radial spokes on the right side, which few ever would consider.
Some of this MIGHT have been meaningful BITD when we were using much lighter spokes with much lighter rims. However wheels today have massive deadloads compared to what we generate when riding, rendering the debate moot, except for an excuse to argue about over beers.