Originally Posted by
SJX426
The only time I cut spokes was a set of wheels with shot rims and tied spokes. Didn't see a way around it.
If you feel comfortable buying spokes at about $72 for a set of wheels, I don't see a problem. After a number of lean years and a "waste not, want not" kind of practice, I tend to keep good stuff and not destroy it to only replace it. I prefer DB spokes on my wheels. Most are straight gauge. Even then I would disassemble and maybe sell the unwanted spokes at half the price.
Originally Posted by
cudak888
It's just that cutting a perfectly good set of stainless spokes in half is a needless (and expensive) waste. I always de-lace, measure, count, then wrap them with gaff tape with the length and quantity on them.
It's saved me a bunch and facilitated the building of a few really nice wheels for cheap.
-Kurt
Originally Posted by
Trakhak
Always disliked watching fellow-mechanics cutting spokes on built wheels. Cutting stainless steel spokes can be hard on cutting tools, for one reason. And, coincidentally or otherwise, those mechanics tended to be hacks in other ways (e.g., ruining customers' freewheels by neglecting to secure the freewheel removal tool in place with a Q.R. skewer).
There are people who believe otherwise, but my experience of building wheels starting in the 1960s has suggested that the same stainless steel spokes can be used on wheel after wheel after wheel without problems.
If they were my hubs (and I have a couple of pairs of tubular wheels with high-flange Campy Record hubs that I came across that had been set out for trash collection), I'd de-tension the spokes, remove them from the wheel, and measure their length. If a prospective buyer happens to need that spoke length for the new rims, shipping the hubs and spokes in the same package should cost the same or little more and would enable the buyer to save the $70 or so that new spokes would cost.
... first, even with spokes retailing at $1 per spoke, I've never, ever paid more than around 40 or 50 bucks per hundred. And that's for DT's.
With regard to wasting things, perhaps I'm in a different demographic, because I have an entire 5 gallon bucket of various bunches of varying lengths left over from previous wheel projects, that I'd like to use up before I die...and I know a guy here with a cutting and rolling machine for spokes who shorten to length for me when I ask him to. And many, (not all, but many) of the hubs I salvage here are from wheels built out with galvanized spokes anyway. Many are wheels I just don't know the history on...and I spend a lot of time building out a wheel set on an old hub. That said, I have certainly reused stainless spokes on occasion. I prefer to have some idea of the history of use, but if I have access to a certain length in used, then that's what goes in the wheel. Usually with new nipples
I get the cutting tool thing...I really do. People used to trash the cable cutter edges all the time at the co-op here, despite clear prohibitions posted on the handles. And I was the guy who had to get them re-sharpened.
That's why a short handled bolt cutter , from Harbor Freight, is the way to go.
With all the never, ever, ever's floating around, I thought maybe I was missing some secretly damaging result to the hubs, which really is why I asked. Anyway, thanks for the responses