Any suggestions for a build such as this?

with 36+ holes?

kinlin xr-300 rim. hub/spokes of your choice.

Heh, I've got a 36/36 set and a 16/20 set. Gotta admit, I love the look of the 16/20 spoke wheels.

Can someone clarify what it means when people say only 16 spokes support the weight on 32h wheels?

nom nom >:f

Never heard it said that way before, but I'm guessing they're referring to the fact that the wheel supports weight by standing on the bottom spokes, rather than hanging from the top ones, as you'd intuitively think.

Obviously it's not simply standing on them, since every spoke is in static tension, the bottom spokes just lose some, which has the same effect as compression, but without buckling the spoke.

By far the majority of load is carried by a few spokes at the botom of the wheel, not the full bottom 16 in a 32 spoke wheel.

Not quite.

The weight is not on the bottom spokes, but along the top 180 degrees of the wheel.

Spokes have no strength in compression, but a lot in tension.

The top spokes transfer the load up to the rim, the bottom spokes (all of them actually) are holding the rim in a stiff strong shape, so it is the rim that is then transfering the load to the ground.

Other way around, but I'm referring to the interpretation given in The Bicycle Wheel; top spokes prestress the bottom spokes in order to GIVE them strength in compression, same way steel reinforcing bar can let concrete members take loads that are effectively tension loads. Only the bottom few spokes see significant changes in tension when the wheel is loaded. Either way, pretty sure it's a matter of semantics because it's the balance of forces that are important, and without the other 16 spokes the wheel isn't going to be a wheel.

DH wheels don't have to be bomb proof when you have 8/9 inches of travel to soak up the bumps also.

There is no force being pushed down on the bottom spokes. the strength comes from the top and the shape of the rim.

Some of the strongest wheels may have very few spokes:

This Shimano MTB wheelset is known to be one of the strongest in existence, but notice the special lacing pattern, hubs and rim.
Review with info: Shimano WH-R540

Those are road wheels.

These are Shimano mtb. wheels:

A lot of the time, the FG riders are young, and just starting out in the world, careerwise, or not even a career yet, just a job or in school, so yeah, I can understand a fixation on cheap pricing.

Buy nice or buy twice.

Do you mean the WH-R540? I see MTB people using them, and mine are 26".

Can you find the Shimano link for these mountain bike WH-R540 wheels? I've looked on their website and just see their WH-Mxxx wheels with the M standing for Mountain; like the R stands for Road.

Are people using these as 29"er wheels? You say yours are 26". Did Shimano stop making them?

your Maddy sucks! but only 'cause you stole my vintage headbadge idea. ;0)

I didn't 'steal' it. I was inspired by it.

You know my Madison rocks!

wow so many posts... ok so, I'm getting a special treat to be able to order some stuff wholesale... Mostly I am gathering parts for 2 wheel sets... 1 is a track set that will see road too (but not a ton) and the other is a polo/busting around set... So as I look in the catalog alls I see is 32h... Even the velocity chukkers are only offered in 32h (this is not a super big distributer mind you). Its just sort of frustrating to see when you have always ridden/ been told 36h is the way to go considering your size... I dont know where I am going with this, I just got off work...

So many questions... I only found a link to a few PDFs of exploded views of both the rear and forward wheel. For now.
I've seen several of these wheels IRL, and they were all 26". Online, everywhere I looked, they have been used by MTB guys. That's all just anecdotal, though, so make of it what you will.
I do believe Shimano isn't making them anymore, but I'm not 100% sure.

Only if there ARE no bottom spokes.

"Bicycle Wheel as Prestressed Structure

J. Engrg. Mech. Volume 119, Issue 3, pp. 439-455 (March 1993)

C. J. Burgoyne 1 and R. Dilmaghanian2
1Univ. Lect., Engrg. Dept., Univ. of Cambridge, Trumpington St., Cambridge CB2 1PZ, United Kingdom
2Formerly, Steel Construction Inst.

Issue Date: March 1993

Bicycle wheels achieve their structural efficiency by making use of prestressing in three ways. Tests show that the bottom spokes carry virtually all the load by compressive forces, which reduce the tensile prestress set up in the spokes when the wheel was made. The test results are compared with an analysis that considers the spokes as a disk that can carry force in one direction only. This is shown to give good agreement, as does an analysis that considers the rim as a straight beam on an elastic foundation. The behavior of the wheel with an inflated tire is also considered, and it is shown that good comparisons with theory are obtained if the reaction from the road is assumed to be distributed over a specific length of the rim. Prestressing is shown to be important also in the mechanism by which the various forces are transmitted through the tire from the road to the rim.

©1993 American Society of Civil Engineers"

There was a "Reply" to that article, published 2 years later, but my institution doesn't have access to that journal. Can you access it? Maybe there's some interesting counter argument.

I might be able to, but to be honest I'm WAY too lazy to go through the motions. So instead, here's another one that's kind of cool: https://www.rose-hulman.edu/~fine/FE2002/Projects/Hartz.pdf

Check out the exaggerated deformation and strain diagrams on pages 8 and 9 of the PDF. There's barely any tension increase in the top half of the wheel, but significant reduction at the bottom because of localized deformation.

I'm not really pushing the point, though. However you describe it, the wheel supports a load through a change in the net internal force, and a bottom spoke in compression is equivalent to one in reduced tension.

Can't we all just get along???