Originally Posted by
Trakhak
As far back as the mid-'70's, I occasionally built and rode rear wheels with odd patterns, for my own amusement, such as a 36-spoke wheel with a cross-radial-radial-cross pattern on the non-drive side and radial on the drive side. Held up and rode fine, of course. Years later, a young guy I'd taught to build wheels miscalculated the spoke lengths for the first set of wheels he built for himself, but built them anyway: radial front, radial both sides in the rear. Held up and rode fine.
Which makes sense. After all, the earliest racing ordinary/penny farthing bikes had all-radial spoking. As I understand it, crossing and lacing spokes came to be a common practice solely to minimize damage from the flapping around of broken spokes, a common occurrence with the weak steel spokes used in those wheels.
One pattern I never had the nerve to try was one that a young engineering student I used to ride with theorized would work fine: a non-radial build with no crosses, with all of the leading spokes on one flange and all of the trailing spokes on the other. Tough on the middle of the hub, if nothing else.
Danger Will Robinson. From Sheldon Brown and John Allen:
Drive wheels and wheels with hub brakes should never be radially spoked. Due to the near-perpendicular angle of the spoke to the hub's tangent, any torque applied at the hub of a radial-spoked wheel will result in a very great increase in spoke tension, almost certainly causing hub or spoke failure.
[Yet another note from John Allen: I have seen such a wheel. To protect the guilty, I will not say who built it. No, it wasn't Sheldon. A friend and I inspected the bike. He held the front brake and pushed down on a pedal with his foot. The spokes of the rear wheel changed angle noticeably, pinging as they rotated in the spoke holes of the hub, and ringing with rising musical pitch like an electric guitar when the player pulls up on the tremolo bar.]
Cross-radial-cross pattern, there's a name for that... crow's foot? EDIT: Verified on Sheldon Brown.
Penny farthings, if radial spoked, may have had spokes that were so long, they elasticly stretched to a semi-tangential position under drive torque, which limits the mechanical advantage, then flex back to radial when stopped, and that works, mechanically. But if spokes much shorter stay mostly radial, when just off center under torque, there's a huge mechanical advantage pulling on the rim.