36H rear hub laced radial or 2x on idle side, and 2x on drive side to 28H rim. Problem, or piece of cake?

Thought you had some wheels .. you just posted the picture

Easier if it were easily divisible by 4 or 3 but 36/28 = 1.2857142 .. get a 36 hole or a 24 hole rim

.. the math to calculate a variation in spoke lengths is more challenging than plain arithmetic..




'/,

24 hole or 36 hole is easy. 28 is not plug and play. Roger

Neither.


The radial will build up fine. But the 2X will take several different spoke lengths. If you have the time to make/buy/ test fit spokes repeatedly, it's just a bit time consuming.
I've done it once and is unlikely to do it again.

With a simple CAD model the spokes lengths could be predetermined. Still a pain in the ass to build and maintain.

Quite probably - for those who have that tool.
I drew it out. Used excel to create two pie charts, one with 14 sections, one with 18. When I overlayed them I could guesstimate where the spokes would end up compared to where they should have been. Worked well enough.

Takes more effort, sure. Hunting down all spoke lengths took some doing.


Not really. Mine stayed as true as any other wheel I've built. Had a bit of trouble first, when I tried 3X. Broke some spokes by the nipples due to the angle. 2X went fine.

If you keep a wheel long enough, chances are that at some point you'll swap a rim or hub, preferably the same as before. With this oddball wheel build, you'll be going through this whole weird build again or buying all new spokes. Why not just do it right the first time?

This was a drum brake wheel, so barring impact damage, the life prediction was good.
As to why, I blame Sheldon Brown. Somewhere he said that if you've got as many spokes in both wheels, then either your front is overbuilt or your rear is underbuilt.
And since I had the 36H drum brake hubs I wanted to use, and a 32H offset rear rim I wanted to use, well, then I simply had to use a 28H rim for the front.

Thanks. I think I'll be sticking to 36-on-36.

Use some nice thin double-butted spokes and you won't incur much of a weight penalty with all those spokes.

My wheelsmith's default is DT Swiss Competition DB spokes.

There's two different sizes. See if he'd be willing to use the 1.8/1.6/1.8 ones.

This question points up one of the differences between knowledge and wisdom.

The wheel you posit isn't especially difficult. It's simply a matter of deciding whichn holes to use and which to skip, and working out the various spoke lengths. Once that's done, the wheel is like any other build of a similar (half radial/ half 2x) pattern, needing no more nor less maintenance.

So, it's purely a question of knowledge and not difficult to work out.

The wisdom is knowing the difference between what you could do, and what you should do. This wheel is a perfect example, you could do it easily enough, but why would you want to?

In your shoes, I'd work out what' needed, and once I realized that I could do it if I wanted to, then pass on actually building it, and buy matched hubs and rims.

Ergo, I am going with 36-on-36.

Want to cut an unimportant amount of weight and do something special, try a quintet lace.
Basically ignore every 3rd spoke on the NDS. It turns a 36H wheel into a 30-spoke wheel.
Quite nice spoke tension balance.
Works fine on reasonably robust rims.

Not too concerned about weight. A SRAM DD hub weighs 960grams.

Even if you're "not too concerned", it doesn't hurt to consider your options in the tire/tube/rim/spokes department to keep the total weight reasonable. By using the DD hub, you're saving the weight of a front derailleur, extra chainrings, front shifter/cable, etc, so you don't need to resign yourself to having a heavy bike yet.

(Of course, I'm not going to twist anyone's arm to be a weight weenie. )