After much buggering about I have changed my mind about which rim to use to try and build my first wheel. Result is new spoke lengths and phr washers being required. Managed to find the washers for only a mildly eye watering price and the spokes are going back to/coming from rose so all sorted on that front but nips I am unsure of.

I want brass and currently have a bag of non pro heads. Pro heads in brass appear to be like hens teeth in the UK and cost accordingly. Is it OK to use non pro head nipples with the phr ‘system’?

Cheers.

Because of the shape of the washers I think you need the pro head or squorx as they have a rounded profile where they sit against the phr’s.

I found some prolock brass nipples at a sensible price (relative to the same nipples elsewhere) on a small wheel building site in the U.K. – maybe it was Ryan builds wheels?

Edit – not Ryan Builds Wheels – it was custom cut spokes .
Co . U.K.

30p per nipple I think. Way more expensive than the aci ones I’ve just ordered but I’m not building with phr washers / DT Swiss rims on this occasion.

Try giving Paul Hewitt Cycles in Leyland a call – they build lots of wheels and will probably have what you’re looking for.

Cheers both. Dropped Ryan a mail as that is who I ordered the washers from and read your mail pre edit! Will see what comes from that. Will also try the other two and see what they have to say.

Get squorx brass, expensive but make wheel building a little easier, you’re using phr anyway.

The only thing with squorx (if you’re on a budget) is you need to think about how you screw the nipples in at the start. Instead of a screwdriver slot they have a torx shape head. I bought the DT Swiss driver for those for convenience, but I think you can just get a torx bolt of the same size and fix that onto something upside down and improvise like that.

Just a tip for something I found handy when building with phr’s was that I used a generous amount of grease on each phr and used that to ‘stick’ it to the nipple to make it easier to insert in the rim without dropping washers/nipples everywhere etc.

The torx head thing was something I was trying to avoid but doesn’t really matter. I think I read an e5 torx socket is what I need. The grease tip on the washers is a good un.

The torx head was actually a positive for me when building, as it gripped the nipples quite hard so I didn’t end up dropping them when trying to insert them through the hole in the rim (all manner of things wrong with the content of that sentence)!

Most disappointing thread ever.

Most disappointing thread ever

Misleading title – but what were you searching for to find it?!

I ordered new (the non fun type) nipples and spokes from Cyclebasket’s website yesterday afternoon and I already have them here in my hands. Very impressed with that.

Can’t you use a homemade spoke nipple driver to load them in and start then on the threads

Managed find them in the end at a UK supplier for 35p each so got some brass squorks from them. Link below. Also get an e5 torx thing from ebay for £4 which will hopefully do the job. Cheers all.

HewittCycles

Brass squorx should be pretty good to build with, nice work.

I’ve replaced most of my spokes / nipples in my Hunt rear wheel now – to get the nipples in without dropping them in the rim (which is deeper section than the mtb rims I’ve previously built with) I cut off one of the old spokes to the thinner section which would slide all the way through a nipple and that worked nicely.

Just got to true / tension / dish the thing now.

Misleading title – but what were you searching for to find it?!

Um … nipples.

It should (hopefully) be a nice wheel once I have it finished. Dt240 36 tooth ratchet hub, dt xm481 rim, dt comp spokes. Got a lot of reading to do now before I start.