Originally Posted by
ljsense
No one has mentioned the spokes themselves. I can't tell from the photo for sure, but these look like straight gauge spokes. I'd rather have a spoke break before a rim.
Rims need tension to make a strong wheel. It's like building an arch. If a rim calls for a lot of tension, and it's a light alloy, I think it pairs best with a wispier spoke that's been swaged down or, as most people say, butted. This makes the spokes more elastic. When tension increases, the spokes stretch and the rims encounter less fatigue. As the spokes stretch and unstretch, yes, eventually they'll break.
Anyway, great points by Psimet and others -- but I always look at the spokes themselves as a big part of the wheel building equation.
The spokes are actually a much smaller part of the overall process than many realize. They truly just transmit the tension. Their cross sectional size and material composition determine the amount to which they elongate under the load cycle they see. This doesn't translate into an affect on the rim though in as much as long as the tension is carried to the rim then it matters not what shape that tension member is. Think of the degrees of freedom in the connection. It starts to become clearer that it's really just pulling on it (save for some moments caused by torsion/braking).
I wrote what I thought was a pretty good break down on spokes on my site:
https://www.psimet.com/blog/spoke-se...icycle-wheels/