Useful information about measurements, bike mechanics and wheelbuilding in general. Subscribe below if you like it!
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Carbon spokes have gone completely mainstream over the last few years, no doubt about it. And yet it happened so quickly that many traditional wheel builders feel left out.
Recently, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by french wheel building group, called La Roue Artisanale.
Understanding NSD exposes why ERD alone has never told the whole story, and why it’s the key to resolving inconsistencies in spoke length.
Spokes don’t just hold a wheel together; they stretch under tension. A feature, most wheel builders are not fully aware of.
With this lightweight build, I wanted to see how far I could push structural balance using a thought-out mix of components and tools.
Whether you are lacing your first wheel or tensioning like a pro, here's an extensive wheel building vocabulary.
A fresh look at one of my most exciting builds to date, using Alpina Raggi's new Carbolite carbon spokes!
Revisiting 2:1 wheel setups to introduce visual build templates and updated app's spoke calculator.
Uncovering common patterns, identifying benchmarks, and introducing innovative ways to wheel quality assessment.
Does traditional industry materials still have anything new to offer? Detailed review of Alpina spoke range.
Combining three lacing setups into one wheel where all started with spoke holes completely aligned (no offset) in both flanges.
Captivating imagery showing the creation of a custom carbon wheelset, capturing the heart of wheel building.
As of this week, you can now calculate lengths for Berd's advanced polymer spokes, right on app.spokecalc.io!
High-performance and heavily used bike wheels require spoke and nipple preparation. Learn some tips & tricks from the pros!
Celebrating its 5th anniversary in this week prompted me to share a different article whatsoever, more like a retrospective on this five-year journey.
In the world of wheel building, where precision is paramount, one measurement stands at the center of confusion – the Effective rim diameter (ERD).
A detailed breakdown of a dream wheelset assembly with tips, tricks and full integration of the App Spokecalc in the wheel building workflow.
Short article with some, hopefully useful, tips and tricks regarding lacing a wheel with internal nipples.
A simple hack for rebuilding a two-to-one wheel with an alternative, easier to get hub design.
With easily accesible wheel building data, logically the data validity concern appears.
A two step spoke calculation for the uniquely designed Aivee Edition One road hubs.
A loose spoke wheel, that showed how an improperly tensioned wheel can become structurally unstable, even dangerous to ride.
Optimising the tensioning workflow will save your energy and focus that should at all times be on the wheel itself.
By how much does the asymmetric rim design affect spoke length and spoke tension?
Testing a full range of DT Swiss and Sapim spokes, is there any difference between black and silver spokes on the tension meter scale?
In the article you will find how a worn Park Tool TM-1 affects the tension readings and if it is possible to get it recalibrated back to the factory values.
With the all-new Cannondale AI, the frame is designed in that way that the offset shifts the rear hub and drivetrain 6 mm to the right.
In this article, we are looking at three unconventional rim designs that can make a novice wheel builder feel uncomfortable - offset spoke bed, paired rim holes and alternating spoke offset bed.
A detailed and concise tutorial video with plenty of tips and tricks for getting the correct spoke length featuring spokecalc.io, online spoke calculator!
This article is the second part in series of exotic wheel building and shows how to break down the spoke length calculation for a wheel with a 2:1 two-to-one spoke lacing pattern.
The process of wheel building can be broken into two main parts, if you want to true and tension the wheel, you must first assemble it. This is a step by step guide for beginners.
Before taking any spoke tension readings and balancing out tension on each side of a wheel figuring out the target spoke tension and tension distribution for your wheel is a must-do process of every build.
Achieving a perfect trueness is satisfying in itself, but after you include recording spoke tension measurements in a wheel building process, a whole new universe opens to a wheel builder.
A wheel building stand is definitely a more exotic tool that only pro wheel builders use. Let's make one from scratch!
In this little experiment, I was tweaking with specific rim and hub measurements and figuring out how the final spoke length calculations change accordingly.
In this article I would like to show how to take measurements for a straight pull hub and use a straight pull calculator to get the correct spoke length.
Let’s look from a wheel builder’s perspective what to consider when searching for durable, robust wheelset for a heavier rider. A sound advice for building a custom wheelset!
Looking at different spoke nipple types in my workbench drawer, I thought wouldn’t it be interesting to measure rim ERD with all of them?
Whether you are a seasoned wheel builder or a small bike shop mechanic that occasionally deals with taking measurements for wheelbuilding, keeping record of your work is a great practice of this trade.
Just owning a spoke tension meter and knowing desired spoke tension for your wheel doesn’t help you much. Ironically in most cases, it doesn’t even get you started using such high precision device.
Mastering wheel building requires mastering spoke tensioning. Imagine it as an invisible force that makes our wheels strong and durable.
Rarely you are challenged by somehow exotic lacing. Being rim or spoke design. Paired spoke hole hub design is just one case that requires a specific calculation correction for the correct spoke length.
“Garbage in, garbage out.” Mild interpretation would be that the results will be incorrect if the input is of poor quality. So to avoid costly measurement errors, use good quality measurement tools and follow some advice below.
SpokeCalc has been designed to simplify the use of a spoke calculator to a common, first time user as you will find it in the following tutorial. So let’s see what features are available in SpokeCalc.