wheel lacing insanity, please help!

[7aliveatlast7]

Wow, that looks like more bend than I had envisioned, but bet it works fine. Love your jig idea. That scheme would work for increasing the first bend too with a different hole close to the edge and a little countersink and file work to radius the bend area. Nice job!

thank you!! yes, it was quite a bit more bend than i thought it would need as well, but my measurements indicated about a half inch of downward bend. i was a little leery, but they lined up perfect with the rim dimples!

i agree, that jig would also work if the head bend needed to be changed, but what xb said about the swaged area needing to sit as flat on the hub flange as possible made sense to me, so i figured i'd better not go that route.

 

[jpmobius]

Indeed. Wasn't thinking it would have helped to increase the first bend in your case - like XB says, how the spoke fits in it hole in the flange is important, and is what caused me to make the jig I have and fuss over the spokes fitting perfectly (much like yourself!). Have to say that after all this discussion, my thinking on how critical all this is has changed. I rarely see any actual problems with wire wheels, and I think all of those I have seen were on motocross bikes - which seem to be able to keep running with pretty disaster-ized wheels without failing totally. Maybe they are more fool-proof than suspected - as long as the paint doesn't chip!

 

[7aliveatlast7]

What also helped ease my mind was talking with Devin from cognito moto. I hope he doesn't mind me sharing this, but he said it is pretty common for him to need to bend and tweak spokes to make them fit. So yeah, I started getting the idea that there is some leeway with spoke setups, haha.