Steel spokes aren't weaker than aluminum rim material a few millimeters thick. None of the parts of a wheel under tension are very large - flange, rim or spokes. But the rims are what dies first.

And, I'm speaking again from the professional experience of people that build wheels - the rims should crack or wear through, first.


The difference between professionals and you is that our best practices bear a striking resemblance to what the engineers and the manuals also say we should be doing. You seem to often have these contrarian ideas about not torquing things properly or what's important in a wheel build that you arrived at from some process that wasn't education or working with highly experienced people.

Everything fatigues, but Brandt said that rims fail before spokes, which is why he talks about "wheels" that he has rebuilt multiple times by only replacing the rim.

No, I didn't say that at all. I said that thicker spokes can contend with lateral bending forces better than thinner spokes, but neither should be bending laterally at all.

Not something I said.

As far as Ric goes, let's just say that I am politely disagreeing with a fellow professional, and I have stated why I disagree. To believe that a heavier elbow is necessary, you have to first believe that elbow failures are the result of ordinary stresses, rather than forces that should not be in the elbow.


Here's the difference between us - I have never had any wheel that I've built break spokes at the elbow. Zero. And that is the experience of many wheel builders.

So you should be asking yourself "Why were my 2.0 spokes breaking at the elbows when pros don't have that problem? Could it be something I did or failed to do?"


I think you're not setting up your spokes correctly, and you have found the 2.3mm bandaid for your technique issue.

We get bikes of all kinds at my co-op. That's high end to the very dregs. I would agree that most wheels are machine made but that's the vast number of wheels in the world to begin with. Only a very small percentage of all wheels are built by a competent wheel builder.

I purposefully left out spokes broken due to other factors in my estimation. The vast majority of broken elbows and heads that I have seen resulting from fatigue have been on the driveside. As I've said numerous times above, I seldom seen nondrive side spoke breakage of any kind.

I would also agree that a well constructed handbuilt wheel is superior. However, most handbuilt wheels aren't built for heavy duty applications where an Alpine III (or similar) is advantageous. The heavier duty spokes fit within your "equipment" choices, although most people don't even think of the spoke when building wheels. They are, more often than not, just an afterthought. And the result is wheel failure for even a handbuilt wheel if the purpose is for heavy riders and/or heavy loads.

You are failing to understand what is meant by "energy". That is the tensioning/detensioning mechanism. When the spoke detensions, the force is converted to energy and movement of the spoke. When the load comes off the spoke and the spoke is retensioned, the energy is converted back to force. Movement can be considered to be energy.

As to the tension, a higher tensioned spoke (drive side) goes through a much greater swing of force as it is detensioned and retensioned. The rim deflects upward as much for spokes on both sides of the wheel as it hits the bottom of the wheel. This means that the higher tensioned driveside spokes undergo more movement and thus are worked more than the nondrive side. That's why I'm surprised by people saying that the NDS spokes are more likely to fatigue. It doesn't fit with the physics.

You aren't saying anything that I would disagree with nor that I don't already know. However I would add that choosing a spoke with a large diameter does all that and adds a buffer against fatigue and thus makes for a more durable wheel. If you can get all that without much weight penalty, what's the harm?

I know you did, I just wanted to clarify in case someone read it as total detensioning.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying, because the way I do, I'm not sure I agree.
NDS spokes on a dished wheel pull more proportionally laterally than DS spokes because of the angle, of course. But they are only doing compressive "work" on the rim in proportion to their tension.The total compressive force of tension on the rim is a function of the number of spokes and their individual tensions. If half the spokes are half the tension of the other half, the total compressive force will be less than if all the spokes are the same tension of the higher half. Build a front wheel (with roughly the same bracing angles as the rear NDS) at the same tension as the rear NDS, and it will be an under-tensioned wheel.

This is true for materials that do not have a fatigue limit such as aluminum. But that's the "magic" of fatigue limits. Stay under them and it really doesn't matter whether you're at 20% or 80% of that limit.

True. And those tend not to have the problems of fatigue that we're discussing, particularly DS spoke fatigue.
I don't know for whom spoke choice is an "afterthought," especially among professional wheelbuilders. Perhaps I should use the term "wheel designers/builders" because that's almost like saying tube diameters and wall thicknesses are an afterthought among framebuilders. If that's true, then I wouldn't consider them very thoughtful, even if they're getting paid. Not that there's anything wrong with being a production line employee, but that's more a component assembler than someone who has to consider all the interactions of the components they're assembling.

Perhaps I'm failing to understand what you mean by energy, because that's a very broad term. Here's how I am understanding the terms: What you call "energy" I'll call "stress." The reaction of the spoke to stress is "strain." Standard engineering terms.
The movement of the spoke under stress cycles isn't "energy" but a reaction to energy. That cyclic loading/unloading work-hardens the metal, causing it to become brittle, and eventually crack. Try bending a coat hanger back and forth for a minute or two. Same effect.


Here's what I understand: Spokes are wire. Tension on a wire causes it to become longer. That's the stress/strain relationship. The more stress, the more strain. As long as that stress stays below the material's elastic limit, the spoke will return to its original shape when the stress is released. If that elastic limit is exceeded, the spoke will change its shape, or "take a set" (which, may I note, is part of the purpose of what we call "stress-relieving." That is more accurately the relief of spoke twist, and also a temporary overstressing of the spokes in excess of what they are likely to encounter under normal use conditions, in order to force the spoke into the shape it will permanently have in the wheel.) Continue to add stress, and the material will stretch and eventually break. That's kind of the definition of tensile strength testing and stress-strain graphing.

So, the physics (to me) is that given two identical spokes of equal starting length, the spoke under higher tension will be stretched longer than the spoke under lower tension. And thus it will take more rim deflection to cause the higher-tension spoke to lose all its tension than the lower-tension spoke. In a wheel, the spoke is not functionally longer, because the threading on the spoke takes the extra length into the nipple. The stretch is spread over the length of the spoke, however.
(F your I, Jobst Brandt's book gives you the formula for spoke elongation from tensioning: dL=P/K, where K=elasticity of the spoke and P=tension in the spoke. His example for a 1.6mm spoke gives an elongation of 0.732mm at 900N or 92kgf. This is a fair amount more elongation than the amount of rim deflection he calculated in his FEA. That peaked at about 0.13mm for a combination of radial and torsional loading. I haven't run the numbers for different gauges and tensions but I will later if you're interested in seeing them. I'm a bit curious myself...)

With respect, I have to observe that it seems we are in less agreement than you think, or that we know the same things. That's fine, I enjoy the discussion, and if I'm wrong I'll eat my humble pie.

More spoke material is only one component (and frankly a marginally minor one given the sizes of available spokes) of fatigue resistance. That's one of my entire points. You can mitigate against failures by overbuilding, sure. But proper practices and technique make a much bigger difference than a few tenths of a mm of spoke diameter.

If you don't have the option of proper wheelbuilding because of cost or proximity or whatever, then sure, do what works best for you. No judgment implied. There are many reasons for component and assembly choices. Not all are obvious. Some are frankly a bit esoteric. You have to balance everything to your pocketbook and time frame and access.

I'm enjoying following this discussion. Replying and following people's points the last 10-12 posts would take more time than I'm going to commit.
Still curious if Ric's valuing of the fatter-elbowed spokes comes from stuff he's built with a lot of skill (for clydes, loaded tourers or tandems) vs recommendations for general practice when people don't always do a good job. I assume the former, and am confident that everything else being equal, a spoke with fatter elbows is less likely to break at the elbows.

Reading back over this thread, I realized I did misread you. You're talking about the *outside* elbows which bend more to angle inward toward the rim. For some reason I read it as if you were talking about NDS spokes.
The breakage coming only on spokes coming from outside the flange (heads inside) could mean one of two things:
a) those spokes really need to be seated and stress relieved into place, which many wheelbuilds don't do
b) the greater bending angle at the elbow may be the culprit, whether spokes are seated well or not.

It sounds like you've seen many wheelbuilds and broken spoke elbows. What makes you think lack of proper seating is the culprit, no the greater bending?

Also, when you see spokes broken at the elbows, are they more likely to be on the DS or NDS, or distributed about evenly?

This goes to show that you don't understand the issue. No, aluminum isn't stronger than steel. The load at the rim is spread out over a large area while the load on the spoke bend is spread over a much, much smaller area. The total force is the same at the bend and at the rim but the force per unit area is much, much higher at the spoke bend. A more concentrated force accelerate fatigue.

If the person is a professional, they would know not to build the wheel so that the rim cracks. The rim might wear out at the braking track but it should not fail due to cracking. If it does, the "professional" ain't.

This argument hasn't worked the last 16 times you are tried to use it. In your mind I have contrarian about "not torquing things properly" but I have never said what you say I've said. You made it up and it has nothing to do with the discussion at hand.

As for what I've learn on how to build wheels, yes, I'm self taught. That doesn't mean that I'm ignorant nor that I don't know what I'm talking about. I've made a lot of wheels, experimented with a lot of different ideas and had a lot of failures. That's also how I've learned chemistry and science. It's how everyone learns something. You get some education, do it, learn what works and what doesn't, and make a lot of mistakes along the way. You repeat this over and over and over again and try not to make the same mistakes the next time around.

The only real difference between you and me is that I give my expertise away while you sell yours. Bikes aren't that complicated I can, and do, teach people how to work on bikes either in a classroom setting or on the fly in the swirl of activity that is a regular Saturday at my local co-op where I have 6 people that I'm trying to teach each one something entirely different at the same time.

I can teach anyone about (almost) all they need to work on a bike in 12 hours...14 hours if I add in wheel building. I do it every Wednesday night. I have another job that pays the bills but that doesn't mean that I know nothing about bicycles like you have tried...and failed...to point out far too many times.

That's not something that I've disputed. Yes, spokes can outlast rims. But if the spokes start to fail, you have to rebuild the wheel with new spokes. That's when the wheel dies.

By the way, you do know that Jobst Brandt wasn't a "professional" don't you? He was as much an amateur as I am. He was an mechanical engineer..

Okay. On further reflection I was wrong. But, to be clear, you weren't talking about lateral bending forces at any point.

You just like impolitely disagreeing with people who aren't professionals.

Do you tour? Are you a heavy rider? I also doubt that you have had zero spoke breakages over your whole life. Everyone has to start somewhere and few people build perfect wheels right out of the box.

I know why 2.0mm spokes were breaking. They weren't up to carrying the load. Going to 2.3mm spokes changed that. Why would I go back? And, as I said above, I know how to form spokes to a wheel and how to build wheels in general. I've look at all kinds of reasons for spoke breakage...as have many people who carry heavy loads...they break for the very reasons that Ric Hjertberg has laid out. It's not like spoke breakage is an unknown thing to happen to wheels.

So you "politely" disagree with Ric Hjertberg but when I use them for the very reasons he...a "fellow professional"...suggests they are a "band-aid". You can level ad hominems all you like. I don't consider them a band-aid nor the problem to be a technical issue. The problem is strictly mechanical, i.e. 2.0mm spokes are too light a spoke for the duty.

I've seen more driveside, if memory serves.

Spokes are mild stainless steel - there is no difference between how the elbow was formed in the first place and the bending you do when you seat the spoke. If just being bent was the problem, the inside spokes would break, too. But the way spokes come from the factory pretty much match the angle of the inside spokes, so we don't need to modify their bend. Since it is easier to add bend than take it away, it makes sense that the spokes come ready for the inside and you modify them for the outside spokes.


But the main reason I think that it is a lack of seating is that they don't break when you seat them, and most everyone who builds wheels for a living seat the spokes and don't have customers bringing in wheels with broken spokes.

Thanks. That's consistent with what cyccocommute reports. NDS spoke breakage is less common in both of your experiences, contra to the standard wisdom (including Jobst and Ric Hjertberg).

That makes sense. Well-built wheels with seated spokes rarely come back. Assuming that means they didn't break (and people aren't just bringing them elsewhere), then there's a clear contrast between wheels with well-seated spokes and poorly-seated spokes.

This makes me want to go and stress-relieve/seat the spokes on machine-built wheels that I've gotten from friends.

That's the theory, but the reality is that spokes outlast rims. When built by people who know what they are doing.


Who told you that? Quote someone, tell us about your experience working for wheel builders, anything.


I'm giving away expertise right now. Expertise that came from training with professionals and executing their instruction properly so my finished products didn't break any spokes.

Your claim is that you learned so much from making a bunch of wheels that failed that you now know to use oversized spokes.

Why is it you think you know more about building wheels than trained people, again?

The wheel also dies when/if the hub fails. That has nothing to do with which component is expected to fail first.

Brandt was a mechanical engineer that worked for Avocet. How the hell is he an "amateur"?


No, I'm disagreeing with you. I don't normally bother to delineate between pros and home mechanics, but since you always bring up your extensive resume of breaking stuff as a learning process and then teaching people at the co-op, it seems apropos to mention the other way how to learn to do things - by methodical instruction from experts.

No, I have never broken a spoke. In the years of building wheels for myself, truing new machine built wheels for customers and building wheels for customers, I have never had a broken spoke that wasn't from something external. I still ride the first set of wheels I built under instruction 29 years ago. It was good instruction - graduate of the Wheelsmith program.

Nearly everyone picks out a rim that they consider to be "strong". At nearly the same time, people pick out the hub they want for various other reasons. Spokes are seldom considered for anything other than length and certainly not for strength.

As I've said before...numerous times...go read the Wheel Fanatyk article. His very first question is "What’s the biggest overlooked feature in wheel building?" He also lays out the several facts on wheels and spoke and breakage with which I happen to agree wholeheartedly. Paraphrasing: Spokes are the weakest link, spokes break at the elbows and more material at the elbow decreases the tendency to break.

Energy is the movement that occurs. You can call it stress and strain or potential energy being converted to kinetic energy or whatever you like. The results are the same and all we are talking about here is semantics.

The result, as you say, is to make the spoke become brittle and eventually crack.


Yes, but... Adding more material to the cross-sectional area of the spoke prolongs the deleterious effects of the stress. The more metal, the slower the fatiguing of the the spoke. The extra material buys you more time.

Again, yes, but... you don't change the dimension of the driveside and nondrive side spokes differently when the rim deflects under load...at least not vertically. The rim deflects upward a certain amount and has the same effect on both sides of the wheel. Since the driveside is under more tension, the magnitude of the change is larger for it which works the elbows more.

Huh? This sounds more like a cheap shot than "enjoying the discussion". I agreed with you. What more do you want?

Again, not according to Ric Hjertberg. You can also go look at Pillar Spokes. They have some very good graphs showing the breaking strength gains made by going from single butted to double butted to triple butted spokes. You have to do some digging as they aren't on the same chart but a 2.3/1.8/2.0mm triple butted spoke breaks at about 400 kgf while a 2.0/1.8/2.0mm double butted breaks at 295 kgf and a straight gauge 2.0mm breaks at 270 kgf. The butting between the straight gauge spoke and the double butted accounts for the strength difference while the extra and somewhat minuscule 0.3mm of extra material accounts for a significant strength increase on the triple butted spokes.

The % difference is right in the range that Ric Hjertberg lays out in his article...about 35%. That's significant for a minor change.

Again, huh? Triple butted spokes aren't something that you use because you do't have options. You have to seek them out and, often, argue with people about why you want to use them. Shops don't carry them...as pointed out by Ric Hjertberg...and, as this discussion so adequately shows, if you use them people with ridicule you for doing so without understanding the underlying science behind them.

I think are things working at cross purposes here that mask the data. There is the longevity of a wheel. If (and when) a wheel starts to break spokes, the wheel may be years to decades old. Many wheel builders are never going to see a wheel "come back" because the person riding it has either moved, forgotten where they had it build or just doesn't bother.

The other problem is that builders don't tend to ride every wheel they build. Since Kontact likes to portray me as an uninformed amateur, I'll wear that mantle for a bit (not the uninformed part:rolleyes:). I don't build wheels for anyone outside of my immediate family. I ride every wheel I build until such time as the wheel is either dead or I donate the bike that it is on. That means that I have a very personal (but not at all kinky) relationship with the wheels on my bikes. I know everything about their history and how they are ridden.

Most builders don't have that kind of relationship with all of their wheels so they don't know the ultimate fate of a lot of their wheels. Add in what I said above and they may never know if their wheel is a success or failure or if it ever had any kind of problem.

That also means that I build fewer wheels than many "professional" builders but I'm not sure that "professional" builders are building thousands of wheels per year anyway. They are likely only to be building 20 to maybe 50 wheelsets per year vs my 3 to 10.

Thousands are built by machines and, frankly, for most peoples' purposes, they are a better bargain. As I tell my students...yes, I teach people how to build wheels which probably horrifies Kontact...don't build wheels to make a cheap wheel. If you are going to build a wheel, build something that you can't buy off the shelf.

Over the last 30 years, I've built 90 to 300 which isn't anything to sneeze at. Yes, I've had failures and I've had successes. Since the Alpine IIIs were suggested to me around 2000 by a bike shop owner, my success to failure rate has increased dramatically. My first Alpine III wheel would still be going strong if I hadn't loaned the bike it was on to someone who destroyed the wheel. Subsequent wheels built in with these spokes have lasted up to 20,000 miles before the brake track wore out. The Alpines work and there really no downside to using them.

Have I said anything different? Yes, spokes should outlast rims. Sometimes they don't. Stuff happens. But even Jobst Brandt said that spokes will eventually fatigue and when they do, the wheel is done.

Really? You need me to quote someone that over tensioning a spoke to the point where the rim cracks is a bad thing? It goes without saying that cracking the rim is a bad thing and should be avoided.

So you've never made a mistake? Then you haven't learned anything. I freely willing to say that I make mistakes and that I learn from mistakes. There is nothing wrong with it. Mistakes and failures often lead to new discoveries. Teflon, microwaves, x-rays, bakelite, vulcanized rubber, matches, dynamite, nuclear fission, dyes, superglue, penicillin and a whole host of other discoveries have been made because someone made a mistake but was clever enough to learn from it.

Broken spokes and broken parts may not rise to that level but learning how and why they broke and knowing how to avoid it again will teach you more about than years of studying at someones knee. A good teacher encourages failure.


But it does have something to do with what component has a tendency to fail. Hubs seldom fail. Rims can fail but it's not the end of the wheel. Spoke failure is much more common then hub failure but, as I've stated many times, rim failure is much more common...it's just not wheel ending failure.

He wasn't a "professional bike mechanic".

You could have fooled me since you bring it up in every discussion we have. Again, in my real profession, mistakes are encouraged and useful. If you never do anything without "methodical instruction from the experts" and without some heathy out of the box thinking and not a small amount of experimentation, you won't learn much.

On the other hand, we are talking about bicycles which are simple machines and I can teach anyone about all they need to know in a day. The rest is just practice. Even in my "real" profession, people don't spend a lot of time getting methodical instruction from experts outside of college. We are told to figure it out for ourselves and, if you are doing research right, you are the only one doing what you do so there is no "expert". I apply the same techniques and attitude towards bicycles...read, research, and learn by doing.

Bully for you. Call the Vatican! The rest of us mere mortals will just have to muddle along and learn things the hard way. Since you learned how to build wheels through Wheelsmith, you learned how to build wheels from the same person I did...Ric Hjertberg. He was the owner and founder of Wheelsmith and he was the author of a series of articles in Bicycling magazine that got me to building wheels in 1986.

Finally, not all of us can learn how to be a bicycle mechanic at the knee of an expert. We have other jobs and other careers that require too much of our attention to go off and apprentice like you seem to require in order to know anything about bicycles. I had to figure out how to work on bikes through books, magazines and making mistakes along the way. The path isn't important, only the result. And, contrary to your very mistaken impressions of me, I'm a damned fine mechanic.

Now you're claiming that rims will crack eventually due to "over tensioning". Again, where are you getting your information from?

Wheels are spokes, hubs and rims. One of those parts is going to fatigue first and fail, and in well built wheels this happens to the alloy rim, first. You may not be aware of this fact, but it is a fact. You can object all day long about the size of spokes and blah, blah all you want, but it doesn't change that fact. It doesn't come from too much tension, it comes from the rim flexing a million times and the relatively small surface area that the nipple has with the rim or the eyelet has with rim. And it is a reliable enough process that many rims with cracked spoke holes will have more than one.


I managed to go to flight school without crashing a plane, and I learned how to work on bikes without selling customers junk bound for failure or by breaking their components. So I absolutely disagree that the only why to learn something is by first doing it incompetently.

Instead, an instructor can guide a student through the pitfalls of doing something difficult and be available to answer questions and check their progress. Bike mechanics in shops that can't learn without breaking things get fired. It simply isn't that hard to learn to do something right.


In contrast, you make a great case for how not to learn how to do something. Your experience building a lot of bad wheels has made you think you're an authority on wheelbuilding and you now insist that wheels have to be built with special spokes that hardly anyone uses because of a problem you also insist wheels have. But you're wrong - you misinterpreted your failures as being from pairing the wrong components, when it was likely the wrong technique.


Speaking of which, how do you seat your spokes?


"Rim failure" is when the rim is cracked or so warped it can't be used anymore. I don't know what sort of "rim failure" you mean otherwise.




No, he was something even better than a bike mechanic. Bike mechanics don't generally develop theories about how bikes work - they just take over a century of passed down best practices and the guidance of engineers to do things that are sound, repeatable and safe. Brandt was one of those engineers that added data and best practices to the toolbox of wheelbuilding data we draw from.



It keeps coming up because you keep suggesting that the things good mechanics know to be true are not. And then you insist you have a right to assert that everyone but you is wrong because you've broken a lot of stuff in the process of becoming Worlds' Finest Coop Mechanic.


To me, you're the guy who has admitted to destroying cranks and BBs because you failed to follow the instructions that come with them, and still insist that the torque values in the manuals are up for debate. You end up sounding like the guy assembling the Ikea furniture who has extra bolts when he's done and is using a hacksaw to cut off the ones still sticking out.


Then you must not do anything very important for a living. If you were a chef, a pilot, a mechanic or an engineer you don't have the luxury of killing a bunch of people learning safe food handling or how to install brakes by trial and error.




I don't know what leads you to believe you are a fine mechanic since it sounds like you've broken a lot of stuff, and every time you have the opportunity to discuss bicycle mechanics with people who know more than you do, all you do is argue. You sound immune to instruction.


Not everyone can learn everything from a live human expert, but everyone can read the manual - another thing you seem to think is beneath you. I have never talked with a home mechanic with so many contrary theories about how bike mechanics are supposed to be done, or so incredibly close minded when it comes to new information.

I mainly correspond with you so everyone reading your posts doesn't get the impression that your odd ideas and learn-by-failure are correct. Tons of people have learned bike mechanics without destroying things, and it sounds like you just aren't one of those people capable of learning from books or other people. Just like you're not learning a thing right now.

It seems to me that by "everyone" you mean customers who don't know how to design or build wheels. For the purposes of this discussion, that has very little relevance to me. As a wheelbuilder, it's my responsibility to select spokes that suit their purposes and budgets. More broadly, it's my job to help them design a wheel around those purposes and budgets, not simply to take what they've chosen and assemble it for them. A wheel is a system, greater than the sum of its parts. And their combination may have flaws that they had not considered. Understanding the system is my job, and why I was trying to narrow it down to talking about wheelbuilders/designers.

Of course I have read the article. But who's Ric talking about when he asks that question? It's not very clear. If it's customers, then of course he's right. If it's wheelbuilders/designers, then they are barely worthy of the name.

Frankly, your quoted article is a little frustrating to me. Never mind the cartoon characters, the title is too click-baity: "Crack the code" makes it sound like he's going to offer some deep knowledge. But it's nothing more than "more spoke elbow material can help keep them from breaking long-term." That's not exactly news. And there are other ways to address the problem.
I have no objection to people paying more attention to their spoke choices. They should. But IME the "biggest overlooked feature in wheelbuilding" is technique.

Semantics matter if you wish to communicate your ideas clearly. That's the entire point of them. I try to use the engineering terms when it's appropriate because they have specific, well- and widely-understood meanings. "Energy is the movement that occurs" might mean something very specific to you, but it's frustratingly vague for me.

All things being equal, yes, they buy you more time. That's practically axiomatic. But correct building processes buy you even more time without having to resort to an extreme band-aid. As I said some posts back, I've been riding 1.8mm straight spokes on my road wheels (and others) for over 20 years without a single fatigue failure, and I am not a lightweight nor a weak rider.

Let me be perfectly clear: I have absolutely no objection to customers asking for and using spokes with 2.3mm elbows. I have actually built wheels with them before. I'm happy to discuss that choice with them and if we agree that it is appropriate, or if they insist for their own peace of mind or whatever, I'll do it. Do I believe it is a panacea that will create "everlasting wheels"? No, it's only one factor in a complicated system.

You're correct that the vertical rim deflection affects both sides the same "magnitude," because that dimensional change IS the magnitude. However, I really don't know what you mean that the deflection "affects" higher tension spokes more. It makes them shorten the same amount that the lower tension spokes do.

The point I am trying to make about proper tension in the spokes is that the purpose of tension is to stretch spokes beyond the point where vertical rim deflections cause them to lose tension completely. The spoke elbow, if properly seated and supported in a well-built wheel, will not get "worked" more in a spoke unless it loses tension completely or nearly so. This is LESS likely to happen in a higher-tension spoke.

You said you agreed with me. I am having a hard time figuring out where. But I am trying.

Breaking strength is not very relevant to this particular discussion. Spokes do not fail from over-tensioning. Try to build a wheel with anywhere near 270kgf. That's literally off the charts. Spokes have really really high breaking strength, much more than they need. 35% more breaking strength does not necessarily mean 35% more fatigue strength.
Ultimate tensile strength (UTS) mainly serves as a guide to optimal spoke tension, because stainless steel's fatigue limit is about 50% of UTS. So you want to keep your spokes below that. Breaking strength is more about the design of the component than its UTS. But even at half the tensions you quote, the rim or hub are more likely to break than the spoke itself.

Fatigue resistance is a totally different property that has to do with not only material properties, but also the design and use of the component. It's a system interaction, which is why I keep going back to that explanation rather than saying that a slightly bigger spoke elbow is going to have a huge effect. It's merely one factor among many. Will it help? Yes, all other things being equal. Are all other things always equal? No.

I understand the underlying science, I've never ridiculed anyone for using them, and I've made my opinion of these spokes pretty clear. Whatever is said in your tit-for-tat with [MENTION=225388]Kontact[/MENTION] is between the two of you, not me.
Allow me to recommend you read this WF article. I hope you will take Ric's word on this better than you will mine:
Spoke Breakage - Getting Real - Wheel Fanatyk

Now I've added someone to the list of people whose advice I will disregard. Thanks, folks.

:crash:

So I'm actually dealing directly with spokes repeatedly breaking on a 30 year old 700c wheel from my Fuji Sagres SP. If a few days was enough for people to simmer down, I could use some advice about how to proceed.

I posted about this a while back and now have no intention of updating that thread.

I had a knocking sound, once or twice every wheel rotation. LBS 1 looked at rear wheel, squeezed some of the spokes, tightened the crank arms and sent me on my way with a "good luck". Knocking persisted. A while later (I was using this wheel intermittently), broken spoke. LBS 2 replaced spoke, trued wheel - knocking persisted. LBS 2 advised that these are good wheels and should see several more years of service. 1 week later, new spoke was completely slack. Honestly, a lot of the spokes seem a little loose to me, but I have zero experience with tensioning spokes. Disassembling wheel to inspect hub cups/cones/bearings etc to investigate knocking and "ping", another broken spoke. Both of these were on the drive side, but I can't remember whether the elbows were facing inward or outward (sorry not sure of technical term). I noted that the elbows do NOT all sit flush against the face of the hub, many of them are angled. Would this be evidence of the machine-built nature of the wheel? It seemed to me that this was a point of weakness, and my observation and evaluation were prior to reading this thread.

I don't want to pay $60-75 to have the wheel re-laced (LBS 2 is cheapest in town at $40 + spokes and nipples) when I can get a brand new replacement wheel for slightly less, shipped. But I don't really want to even pay that much to replace a good rim and good hub as well if the wheel just has some spoke issues. I have my doubts about the competence of at least 2 of the local LBS, #1 for missing a broken spoke and instead tightening the crank arm, and LBS #2 for replacing a spoke that went completely slack a week later and telling me that this was a solid reliable wheel that should provide several additional years of reliable service, but has additional slack spokes and busted another one (it may have even been broken already at the elbow when I had them replace the "first" broken spoke). I haven't considered LBS #3, but they don't seem to like to deal with customers with older equipment and/or equipment that wasn't purchased there.

Some of the spoke holes in the hub have elongated. I can upload a photo later if anybody is interested.

I've thought about just buying a handful of spokes and just replacing them as they break. I've considered re-lacing the wheel myself entirely and using washers under the elbows (or over the elbows, whichever way you think of it), and just using LBS 1, 2, or 3 to true it up afterward. I would probably just use plain 2mm spokes like the ones that are on there, except maybe stainless (originals are galvanized). This wheel will be used for commuting. It's 36 spokes, 6 speed FW, 126mm spacing. I'm around 180 lbs and bike plus gear usually is around 30-40 lbs. I would not consider myself a strong rider.

Any thoughts on whether or not this wheel should be strong enough with some combination of new spokes and washers? I think if I'm going through the hassle of replacing a few, I may as well do them all. I'd really like to have a problem free wheel. My commute is 25 mi RT, all on the road, some of the roads are quite rough. I suspect I should pay special attention to ensure that the elbows are seated flush in the hub, I think that is what the stress-relieving process entails?

I'm a extreme amateur at wheel building. But for myself every time I've broken a spoke it was on a BMX wheel where I had over tensioned it because of a bad warp in the wheel.
Not all wheels simply ride on the road some have huge stresses put on them like jumping on a BMX.

At least in BMX we do have other materials for spokes like titanium, and now days most spokes seem to be made are at least covered in this plastic like material. I've been wondering if they hold up compared to the older steel ones.

What you describe sounds like the whole wheel has very little tension, and the noises are the largely unsupported rim yanking the spokes taught as it rotates under rider weight. The only thing to really do is get the wheel up to normal tension.


A "warp in the wheel" is a bent rim, and when you try to correct a bend simply with spoke tension you are likely to run into trouble. Bending the rim back into shape is a better course.

[MENTION=390976]Phamilton[/MENTION], if you replace spokes one by one, you won't fix the problem. Either rebuild with new spokes or replace the wheel. And we can walk you through the rebuild, if you like.

Thanks. Would I loosen all the spokes, then re-tighten? That would seem to make more sense than trying one by one. My brain says if I'm going to that much trouble, why not replace the nipples as some of them are rounded. And if I'm replacing the nipples, then it's really only one more step to replace the spokes ... see how I'm wrecked!? LOL

I had to think about it for a minute, but I think you're right, Tom. Really the lacing part doesn't intimidate me, just the tensioning, truing, and stress relieving. That and my lack of truing stand and other equipment are why I figured I could lace it up and have LBS #whichever true it up, but at the moment I don't have a high level of confidence in their mechanical abilities. I could probably true it myself on the bike, but I suspect it would take a long time. Not that that bothers me, I'd just have to keep that in the back of my mind and set it aside for an evening if I get frustrated. I kind of want to try it now.

If you don't have confidence in the skills of your local mechanics, it's the perfect time to build your skill. We've walked lots of folks through building wheels, and we can do it with you. And it's very satisfying!

It's not that slippery a slope. Replacing the nipples is way less work than relacing a wheel. WAY less.

If I were doing your wheel, I'd try to get the spokes to pretty close to even tension first. The rim should be pretty close to true at that point as well. If the rim is very wobbly after that, then the rim has problems that need addressing, or it needs replacing.
Then I'd start to add tension and set the elbows. From then on it's an iterative process of tension, pre-stress, stress-relieve, and true, rinse and repeat until I've reached a wheel that has sufficient tension to remain stable. (Pre-stressing means giving paired spokes on the opposite side of the wheel a good firm squeeze with each hands. This overloads the spokes past what they are likely to encounter under normal use, and will show you how stable the wheel will be. The wheel will deform slightly which is ok. Too much rim deformation and you probably have too much spoke tension. This should also reveal any other spokes that have the beginnings of a crack that has not yet propagated enough to break under normal use tension.)

Go for it.

I try to straighten them with the old 4x4 and standing on them. The problem is they are old rims from the 80's. Really if they were new they would be replaced. But I've built at least 20 sets and only had the spokes break on two or three.

As Ghrumpy alludes, replacing nipples as needed isn't a big deal. And your spokes are not necessarily cooked. So I would get a handful of nipples, de-tension the wheel by setting all the spokes to the same thread/nipple spot, and evenly build the tension back up in small increments until driveside spokes ring when struck like the spokes in a known good wheel.

I really don't see what you have to loose aside from time and a dollar worth of nipples. If the spokes keep breaking - the wheel is trashed. Buy a new one. If you are successful, you both saved the wheel and learned a skill.