Road Fan

Good point! For my Toro Clinchers there's a wide flat area between the bead seats. It's about 14 mm and there's no additional channel say, for helping the bead clear the upper radial edge of the brake track, so I just need to use something with an OD bigger than the nipple head. For my Toro Tubulars there is a hole drilled into the tubular base tape bed, about 12 mm diameter. And the shape of the spoke side of the rim is also very flat. So the same washer with an ability to fit the shallow curvature of the rim, should distribute the pressure much better than the annular line contact you get with only stressing the rim drilling's edge, that the sketch shared by @iab showed.

Road Fan

Clarify "torch" - I'm not a welder or a frame builder. I'm pretty decent at soldering for cabling and electronics (certified by NASA decades ago), and I own an ancient Craftsman propane torch with those gas bottles. That was for installing motorcycle wheel bearings. No oxy, acetylene, et cetera.

I'm with you on the aesthetics! Gonna have to think about the mungy finish on the spokes! The hubs are pretty clean and the rims can use a cleaning - shinyness!

branko_76 

"shiny" generally means smooth, which is prefereable when truing a wheel. A dull washer will have more friction. That said, brass is not a good material anyway for nipple washers because it is too soft. The nipples, when tensioned will bite down on the brass causing friction.

Nipple washers should be of a material that will not corrode or deform. Corrosion and/or deformation will increase friction when truing.

EDIT: thinking about what I just wrote, maybe friction between nipple and washer will help to keep the nipples from rotating while riding thus keeping the wheel true...

Road Fan

Also, I am building with very old rims, perhaps 1970. There are no signs of spoke drilling stress, but I it also has no nipple washers, eyelets of ferrules. It needs a washer, and the purpose of the washer is to spread the stress over a larger surface of the rim, around the hole. Some compliance in the washer is not a bad thing, at least to my thinking.

oneclick 

I think there are some errors here.

a) surface reflectivity *is* a function of rms smoothness, but the difference between a brass washer that as it comes in the package and after it has been annealed is either zero or so close that it does not matter. Remember you are talking an oxide layer that might only be the thickness of the wavelengths of visible light. Any effect on friction is likely to be
1. small; and
2. gone as soon as the oxide layer is wiped away; a single turn of the nipple should do.

b) brass is not a single alloy but a group of them, and so it can have widely varying properties. Its uts can vary by roughly a factor of 3, for example, at the high end surpassing that of some aluminium alloys. You may have only seen/noticed brass in the softer states, but regardless, for the reasons given below, softer is better.

c) if brass is not a good materiel for washers for the reasons suggested then it's not a good materiel for nipples or eyelets either. This obviously is not true.

d) nipples washers that do not deform may, as posted above by another, INCREASE the point stress on the rim. This is a bad thing. There are two ways a washer reduces spoke-hole cracking:
1. it moves the stress away from the hole - cracks begin at the hole; and
2. it reduces the point stress by spreading it over a wider area. A washer that deforms to fit the rim does this best. I anneal spoke washers before use for exactly this reason.

e) the way to keep nipples from loosening to to built the wheel properly. When the spokes are tensioned sufficiently they will not (absent injury) loosen, despite being built with oiled spoke threads, nipples, and rim seats. (There is a book that explains all this; worth getting a copy; but you'll have to be quick if it's via these forums, copies usually sell in a day, sometimes in minutes.)

A last note - for anyone who (as I do) uses washers. They are almost always stamped from sheet. As such they will have one edge rounded and one edge sharpish. Before building I put them sharp edge down on a sheet of emery paper and give them 15 seconds with my thumb to remove any raised edge on the sharp side.

randyjawa 

Try rubbing the spokes with crumpled up aluminum foil. Does not always work great but it works better than most other options.

branko_76 

"errors"

this is a discussion, not a science quiz