aaronmichael

Currently building a wheel and while lacing, it seemed like the spoke were too long. Sure enough, once the wheel was laced and I tried to put some tension on it, the spokes are sticking out the ends of the nipples. Must have done an incorrect measurement somewhere. Anyway, here's a question for everyone in which the answer should help with this wheel build and others:

Say that each spoke is sticking out of the nipple by an excess of 4mm. To rebuild this wheel, would the spoke lengths need to be reduced by 2mm or 4mm?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

squirtdad

Double check the lacing, specifically the starting spoke location......I had this happen once and it was suggested I was off in that area. I had measured the spokes from the old spokes so was fairly sure my lengths were right.....but gave the wheel away before I could prove it was true or not or just stomp on it

bwilli88 

reduce by 5mm or 1mm more than the excess

dsaul

Are you sure the lacing pattern is correct? If you measured correctly, but did a 2 cross instead of 3 cross, your spokes would be too long.

aaronmichael

This was my first time lacing a 2 cross wheel. I'm almost positive that I performed the task correctly but I'll go back and double check. I learned how to build a pretty good 3 cross wheel from Gerd Schraner Art of Wheelbuilding book. I got the process to lace a 2 cross wheel from a book by Roger Musson.

Anyway, regardless of whether it is laced correctly or incorrectly, I'm more curious about the original question in any given scenario. This is definitely not the first time I've laced a wheel with the improper spoke size and I would like to know how to compensate without having to remeasure or change the lacing pattern. Thanks for all the input thus far, any more would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Bill Kapaun

4mm too long is 4 mm too long.
It's that simple.

If you provided some details such as hub, rim, number of spokes & length, one could check the math.

That said, if a somewhat standard 622mm rim, the difference between 1 & 2 cross is about 4-5mm. Slightly more for 2 vs 3. Add a little spoke tension to take the "slack" out of the elbow and it probably "grows" another mm or 2.

aaronmichael

Thank you sir!

grizzly59

If you relace your wheel as a 3x, are your spokes the right length? If you have x number of spokes that work for 3x, I would do that. 3x is considered pretty optimal, or at least it was.