Originally Posted by
unterhausen
...
Even with all the info out there nowadays, people don't really build very good wheels a lot of times. This is true of some people that work in bike shops.
You probably recall on any threads on Rohloffs, I always point out that the wheel builder needs to read the Rohoff instructions before they build the wheel.
A few years ago I was in a bike shop, I had my Rohloff bike with me.
A mechanic saw it and went over to look at the bike for several minutes. Then he asked why the wheel was built two cross, and before I could answer he said he was going to build a Rohloff wheel for a customer but was waiting for the spokes to come in as they did not stock those shorter spokes, and he of course would do it right with three cross.
I already knew the answer, but I asked the question, had he read the Rohloff instructions for wheel building? He said he had built wheels before, he did not need to read any instructions. I told him if he had read the instructions, he would know why it was two cross. I have no clue what he did, but I suspect that his customer has had lots of broken spokes.
I am not a mechanical engineer, or chemist I am a geological engineer (retired). I worked in a bike shop before I went to college, back in the pre-internet days of punch cards and punched paper tape. I am pretty good at trig, but the few times I thought about the math to figure out spoke lengths, I gave up.