Grease vs. spoke prep for first wheelbuild
 

I'm doing my first wheelbuild and was wondering whether I should shell out the $15 or so for real spoke prep, or just use grease. The thing I'm worried about is the wheel needing truing afterwards - will spoke prep make it harder for me to fix my mistakes?

Spoke prep will not make it harder if you make any mistakes . Spoke prep will out last any grease you might use .

The LBS where I buy spokes will dip the threads in spoke prep at no cost to me.
Linseed oil or blue Locktight works well as substitutes for spoke prep. Non of these will hinder spoke adjustments and in fact will help the nipples turn more smoothly at any time in the future.

Over the years I've gone from using nothing, linseed oil, spoke prep, and now bee's wax. If I were building a wheel today, I'd use bee's wax because I like the way the spokes feel when I tension them up. I've also had the occasion to disassemble a wheelset I had built previously using bee's wax and I liked the way the spokes felt as I was taking the wheel apart. Bee's wax is the most labor intensive of the four methods I've used but I don't charge myself labor so I don't care.

If you look hard enough you will be able to find several threads on the subject of spoke prep. I've read posts from several mechanics who I respect who have strongly held but conflicting recommendations. My conclusion from all this is that it doesn't matter. If a mechanic was having failures that were traceable to the spoke prep method he was using, he'd change. When I read from several different wheelbuilders who each have a method they believe in, it makes me think that any of several different methods will be perfectly adequate.

I've been using the same small tin of anti-seize for the spoke threads for decades. in building wheels.

Sadly, a few threads I found on the benefits of spoke prep all seemed to devolve into tensiometer arguments without actually getting much real discussion.

+1 for anti-seize on spoke threads. I also put a bit of grease on the nipple seats, using an inverted nipple on an old spoke and "Schwinn" white grease from a tube that I've had for at least 40 years.

In bike school, we used linseed oil exclusively. I've stuck with that and had no problems.

Yep, that's exactly what I use also. Works great and no uncertainty.

I prefer grease or similar because I found I got too much spoke twist with WS Spoke Prep.

OTOH I use lots of thin spokes so twist is more of an issue for me than it is for those using 14g straight spokes or even some of the common 14g DB spokes. As far as lasting, just about anything will outlast most humans.

I recently purchased a Twist resist spoke gripper. I've used it on half a dozen wheels, and already I wonder how I managed without it on thin spokes. Not at all cumbersome to use as long as you get the right or left handed model as needed.
Spoke prep user here. Bought a big jar of it almost 10 years ago. I use it sparingly so a little goes a long way. I've built a few hundred wheels with it and still have about a third of the jar left.
Does what it's supposed to. I can tweak a wheel years after being built, and the nipples turn smoothly.

Using anti-seize alloy nipples still turn well at least 12-13 years later riding 4-5 days a week which is long as I've gone without bending a rim and replacing it at which point I use an acid brush with half the bristle length chopped off to apply anti-seize to spoke threads and nipple sockets as I move spokes over one at a time.

Brass nipples still turn well at least 16 years later, although I usually only ride that wheel set when there's snow on the ground which hasn't happened since I left Boulder, CO 7 years ago.

Anti-seize is grease plus an additive (often zinc) with a more negative anodic index than the metals you're mating so it'll be what oxidizes.

FWIW, spokeprep was developed by Wheelsmith to increase profits.

Their wheel-building machines couldn't get their wheels to high enough tension to keep the nipples from turning as they unloaded reaching the bottom of the wheel with a heavy rider on top. Warranty returns were expensive. Hand-labor to finish each wheel would have been expensive too. Spokeprep prevented the problem without appreciably increasing labor costs.

If you don't plan on buying some robots and mass producing wheels you don't need it.

There are light rims with low tension limits that see a tension drop when tubeless tires are used where spokeprep might be useful although with rims under 400 grams having durability issues and performance gains up the steepest hills at best proportional to the total weight change (100g nets a 70kg (140 pound rider, bike at the 15 pound UCI minimum) rider/bike combo 0.1%) beefier rims are the right choice for those of us who are not racing in the mountains with body morphology otherwise conducive to winning in that environment.

I was planning on brass nipples and 14/17/14 spokes.

I use Loctite 567 pipe thread sealant. It is tacky enough to hold the nipple and soft enough to be able to true down the road.

same here. too much spoke twist with the commercial products so i stick to grease or anti seize. i

I'd say some sort of spoke prep is pretty optional for brass nipples on thick spokes at 32 or 36h.

You'll definitely want a lube on the threads with spokes that skinny, and tape flags or some way to grip them if you're putting much tension on them. With brass nipples I wouldn't bother lubing the nipple/rim interface unless it was 24h or less.

Same here; a few bucks will buy you a lifetime supply, with enough left over for your wood work and oil paints.

Why not hold spokes in position so they don't twist? I use pliers on round spokes and a small crescent wrench on bladed spooks.

It's more work that I like to bother with.

I manage twist by marking the spokes. When the wheel is firm, but not yet tight enough for spokes to twist, I spin it with a Magic Marker held so it puts a dot on one side of each spoke. That's my reference line, and I can complete the tightening process without worrying about twist. As I near final tight and true, I re-orient all the dots to where they started as I do the last turn on the nipples.

This frees me from worrying about twist until the end, and saves me time through the build. Also the grease I use is pretty effective so there isn't hat much twist in the first place.

Years ago I used to use a 4" adjustable where I ground one jaw slightly out of parallel. I then closed it and soldered it into place (super glue didn't exist yet). I could simply push it against a spoke and the taper gave enough hold to prevent twist, but over the years I decided that was too much work, and adopted my reference marking approach.

In any case, grease reduces twist, and you can use whatever tools and techniques you like to manage it. I don't claim my way is better, just that I find it better for me.

holding the spokes add too much time. sometimes they do need to be held if the wheel is older/used or of unknown quantity

30 or 40 wt motor oil here. I have used anti seize, spoke prep, grease.......never used wax.
I even used the loctite green permeable stuff once that you can put in post assembly.


If you pull up your spoke tensions evenly and to close to the max your rim will allow, and pay
attention to stress relieving (which you should do anyhow), your spokes aren't gonna magically
reposition themselves as you ride. Personally, I find spoke prep to be ridiculously overpriced,
but to each his or her own.

Thanks for the tips, everyone. FB, that sounds like a great idea (marking the spokes) - I'll definitely try that.

I use regular motor oil as well. I'd say the 10K miles I have on my current set of commuter wheels support my method.

I imagine snot would work.

If you decide to use spoke prep, there's a neat trick that will apply just the right amount of prep on the spokes every time. If you use too much it makes the nipples bind and is probably worse than leaving the threads dry.

Take a cheap, large diameter ATB inner tube and cut a 2-3" section out of it. Take the cap off the spoke prep bottle and slide the whole bottle into the tube section so that the rubber stretches over the open mouth like a drum. Now poke a pinhole in the middle. To apply the prep, just poke the threaded end of the spoke through the pinhole and draw it back out. This will wipe off the excess prep, and leave just the right amount in the valleys of the threads. You probably want to clean the inside of the tube to avoid contaminating the prep.