Originally Posted by
cyccommute
I learned how to build wheels through
Hjertberg’s series of articles in Bicycling Magazine. Yes, I learned through trial and error but that is the way that most people learn and there is nothing wrong with it. As a scientist, I had to develop new ways of doing something by exactly that method. Much of my knowledge and conclusion come from observation and testing…something that has been honed by 40 years of doing scientific research.
Good for you but you also had to go out and build wheels which included not a little bit of error. Making mistakes is one of the best ways to learn how to do something.
And your evidence for this idea is what? It would be lovely if machine built wheels would use spokes with 2.3mm heads but no one…
no one!…does that. Every machine built wheel out there use straight 14g spoke. Triple butted spokes cost more than double butted spokes and double butted spokes cost more than straight ones. As others have pointed out, spokes for most machine built and OEM wheels use whatever cheap spokes they can get their hands on. And lots of those spokes may not be made to the exacting metallurgical standards used by name manufacturers.
You kept breaking elbows, so you concluded that it must be the elbows' fault. Which your confirmation bias was helped by when you found the article we've previously discussed by Wheel Fanatyk that suggested they were great for preventing elbow failures -
especially for machine built wheels. But you always like to ignore the machine built part of that article.
As a scientist, you went to school so you didn't need to blow up the lab to learn what not to do. And I learned wheel building the correct way with the kind of supervision that helped me learn what not to do without wrecking anything because I stopped and asked when things got off.
As to “rim stiffness”, a slight increase in the amount of aluminum used does not significantly increase the stiffness of a rim. Addressing only aluminum here, it is a soft metal with very little stiffness. There are engineering tricks to make it stiffer but the cross section of rim doesn’t lend itself well to those tricks. A 535g Velocity Dyad isn’t going to be significantly stiffer nor stronger than a 450g Velocity A23 with a similar profile.
Who said it is just the amount of aluminum? Did you have scientist hat on?
Rim stiffness is shape
and wall thickness. A 385 gram Kinlin is far stiffer vertically than any 480 box section rim. 1970s wheels were flexible rims held in shape with closely spaced spokes, while Roval changed the game by shifting the structural stiffness toward the rim with taller sections - and then eliminating a substantial number of spokes. A 20 spoke MA40 box rim wouldn't last a hundred mile because the unsupported spans would break just like the spans of an unsupported, trussless bridge
Perhaps you should learn a thing or two about stainless steel. The “stainless” part comes from the addition of chromium to the iron which is the hardening alloy. Nor is stainless steel “weak”. It is stronger than mild steel. That said, OEM wheels aren’t usually spec’d with the higher quality spokes from DT, Sapim, Wheelsmith, Pillar, etc. Perhaps SamSam77’s problem started with low tension but it is also something of a metallurgical problem now. Broken spokes, especially on a low spoke count wheel, adds undue stress on the remaining spokes which can then become failures themselves.
Chrome causes steel to harden! Don't tell carbon or nitrogen - they'll get jealous.
Chromium changes the way steel hardens, but that is only in the presence of the elements that can actually cause martensite transformations or the like. 18/8 is not hardenable. If spokes were made of heat treatable steel, they would be piano wire and half the diameter.
Spokes are made of relatively soft and thick steel because that makes them tough, easy to form threads and easy to bend when you are doing things like seating the spoke elbows. Seat the spoke elbows. You have to seat the spoke elbows.
No one is advocating replacing spokes because of a tension issue. We are advocating replacing spokes because of a breakage issue. And the idea to replace spokes rather than chase endless breakages comes from lots of peoples’ experiences with trying to fix a nearly endless cascade of spoke failures. Tension also isn’t the only answer to every spoke problem. To say so suggests that you don’t understand wheel dynamics.
"Wheel dynamics" suggests that you think there is something magical going on. But wheels are justs parts assembled together. If some of the parts break because those parts weren't assembled correctly, that doesn't mean all the other parts are tainted. And this is even more the case when the rim is stiff because the load sharing is different than a box section rim where tension shifts and the rim changes shape more easily.
"Endless spoke failures" are just wheels that haven't had their problem diagnosed and solved. Steel like 18/8 doesn't slowly fatigue like chromoly. If you arrest the problem early, you aren't going to have spokes that survive tensioning but break a month later.
More like $50 to $80 depending on the spokes and more like $80 to $120 in labor. Didn’t you imply that you built wheels commercially? You must build them cheap. That said, it still comes down to the same problem as SamSam77 has with the OEM wheels. He is going to just trade one problem wheel for an other possible problem wheel. Alternatively, replacing the spokes with better spokes ***cough!****triple butted***cough!***would result in a more durable wheel with fewer problems with the existing equipment. At the very least he should consider replacing the existing wheel with a 32 or, preferably, a 36 spoke wheel if going that route.
Champion spokes are $.90 x 28 = $25. When I looked up labor in 2025 the range started at $60. So my point was that the minimum cost of building a wheel with new spokes is similar to the minimum cost of a new wheel. And a new wheel can be hand trued for just $20. So why rebuild?
And if rebuilding is so prohibitively expensive, why not take the old mechanic's advice and just try to get the wheel working for $25?
My “path” isn’t erroneous. Yes, SamSam77 should probably try to find someone to help. I think I suggested that earlier. But if I haven’t, I agree with finding someone provide guidance. That said, it is possible to build a wheel from a book, a series of articles, or individual instruction. All three as valid ways to learn how to build wheels but the most important part of learning how to build wheels is to build the damned wheel!
If Sam gets "some help", and the help isn't pro level, he's going to have more problems and think he got bad advice.
But if Sam starts with a wheel with no questionable history and tries to refine it, he'll have the opportunity to learn good technique without second guessing the results.