I know that having a hub with one drilling and a rim with another is the classic newbie wheelbuilder mistake, so I just brought Minerva's front wheel in to Harris with me when I went to pick up the hub. I specifically asked if the new hub had 32 holes, and they said yes, so I didn't bother to count them myself.
Until of course, I had cut all the old spokes and the hub out, and laced up 7 of the new spokes, and it didn't add up.... grrrr.
After a bit of research online, it seems this hub only comes in 36, so I can't just exchange it.
Will have to talk to Yellow Jersey about one of their 36 hole 28" rims...
I guess the moral of the story is that you need to count the holes yourself before destroying a perfectly good old wheel. And they only sold me 32 spokes, so I'll need to get four more.
So much for getting all the lacing done this weekend..
One initial thought is that wheel lacing is a lot like knitting. You have a set of configurations, and you vary them in a regular pattern, counting the spaces between them. The tensioning thing at the end makes me a little nervous, but we'll see when we get there.
I know more than a few friends who knit and can simultaneously kick back and watch whole seasons of the Sopranos simultaneously. I have yet to be able to do that with wheel truing. Lacing a wheel is repetitive enough and easy to do, but it's over in a few minutes. The truing can take hours when you first start out.
ReplyDeleteThe other classic newbie mistake is to miscalculate the length of your spokes based on a mismeasurement of your hub and/or rim. A difference of 5mm can be heartbreaking (especially when you only find out that you're either too long or too short after going through all of the trouble of lacing and truing). Since you're going from 36 to 32, it might be worthwhile to recalculate your spoke length and either confirm that your current 32 spokes will still be usable when laced in a 36 hole configuration or, if not, look into doing an exchange. If you haven't laced the spokes yet, they should still be returnable.