Long story short, DT’s spoke calculator slightly hides essential information for the fatbike rims, so now I have £60 worth of spokes that are 3mm too long, and they’ve all been fitted so I can’t return them. (you have to manually amend the flange offset figure to make it work right)

So, job 1, kill every Swiss person.

Job 2, fix the spoke thingy. Obviously, I can just buy more spokes, at a cost of great personal anguish. But before I do that I just quickly wondered if spoke cutting/rolling is a valid option? And if so, who in central scotland can take care of it? I figure it’s a pretty niche thing and could easily end up being too expensive to bother with but I know nothing at all about it.

Cheers STW

A good bike shop should have a spoke threader. I know my LBS does. However, as you’re in the grim wastelands beyond the wall, I can’t suggest anyone. 😉

Am sure there’s someone nearby who will be able to help though. Not a really odd thing to have in a good quality shop.

Ben Cooper has a machine

44mm short

Yes, pop them in, I can chop them down a bit for you.

Not a really odd thing to have in a good quality shop.

Not many places have a proper spoke machine – most have the little Cyclo thing which is okay for roughly threading a few spokes.

44mm short

Pretty sure that’s a 272 that’s just very far away. 🙂

(Was going to suggest Ben, but couldn’t remember where in that savage land of skirt wearers he’s based! 🙂 )

Spoke rolling tools can take a while so not sure how much someone would charge? Got to be pretty close to the cost of new ones I imagine.

DT’s spoke calculator slightly hides essential information for the fatbike rims, […] (you have to manually amend the flange offset figure to make it work right)

What was it that you fell foul of?

Do they protrude far enough that they foul rim tape?

Big Al at wheelcraft has a very nifty Phil wood one. Cracking to watch it work.

YGM Ben, cheers!

@tillydog, because the spokes are offset- in 2 rows 35mm apart- it has the same effect as the flanges effectively being narrower. And narrower flanges/spoke offset means less spoke angle, means shorter spokes. I’d assumed that the DT calculator, when you give it that exact rim and that exact hub, would give you the correct answer rather than having to do a manual fix to make it work. It does tell you this in the help section but I just naively assumed it’d be right straight off.

BearBack – Member

Do they protrude far enough that they foul rim tape?

Aye- and they’re single walled fatbike rims so that’s a bit of a problem.

(but just because YGM, don’t feel like you have to reply at midnight! I’m a fanny but I’m not a dick)

Ouch! That’s a bit of a ‘gottcha’. I guess they aren’t long enough to lace 4X?

Good thinking that but just checked and they’re a bit too short. 3.5X 😆

Proper spoke rolling machine for the workshop?

About £3K last time I looked at I-Ride catalogue for cyclus tools

Never seen one in person, would like one!

Does it make any difference that you’re not cutting off all the thread when rolling the new thread. Is it possible to ‘cross thread’ with rollers?

Spoke rolling tools can take a while so not sure how much someone would charge?

About 4 minutes to do a full set of spokes with my Morizumi machine – it cost about as much as that Cyclus though 😉

Does it make any difference that you’re not cutting off all the thread when rolling the new thread. Is it possible to ‘cross thread’ with rollers?

It doesn’t seem to – I do it quite often, and it seems to guide itself onto the part-threaded spoke and keep rolling. There’s a difference between flat die rolling like all the fancy machines use, and round die rolling like the little twiddly machines use. Flat dies make a much neater thread.

About 4 minutes to do a full set of spokes

*Expects a Nortwind thread on hourly rate rant 😉

That’s annoying. I went though the same with my Hugo, but as I was using the Musson/wheelpro calculator, which doesn’t pretend to give you any easy answers, I caught it before I ordered.

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/wheel-building-q-spoke-calcs-for-rims-with-offset-holes

Goes to prove Musson’s point that he makes quite strongly that you shouldn’t trust anyone else’s numbers!

I guess the problem is that the choice of offset rim in the drop down changes the hub part of the measurement, rather than the rim, so it needs another field added for offset per rim, and a slightly amended calculation.

Would have thought that’s a morning’s work, absolute tops, for someone at DT. There can’t be many rims with a significant offset. 20 or 30?

I never trust hub and rim databases, always measure myself – been caught out too often with that.

Ditto. For a calculator. I use a nice one on a recumbent website.

There’s a difference between flat die rolling like all the fancy machines use, and round die rolling like the little twiddly machines use. Flat dies make a much neater thread.

I’m looking forward to cutting 6 spokes down by 5mm and then extending the thread using a cyclo thing. I’ll let you know if trying to extend the thread is a disaster.

Bencooper is the miracle cure!

I’ve used this calculator with offset drilled rims – it allows you to enter the offset into the calculation. Was fine.

I prefer it to all the others I’ve used like DT Swiss etc. Has a reasonable database too which matches my own measurements.

You even get a pretty picture to confirm the numbers.

http://www.kstoerz.com/freespoke/fullcalc

I agree with Ben that I wouldn’t trust a spoke database – personally I use http://www.sheldonbrown.com/rinard/spocalc.htm – which does come with a database, but it’s clear from the calculations page exactly what data is being used and how to enter a rim offset. I have to give a big up to Ben because whilst I didn’t use his services (so didn’t even pay him anything) he helped a lot when I was trying to find a fix which involved making a double ended spoke after busting a spoke hole on my (very expensive) hub.

I want to see this machine in action now! Not so much how it works, that’s simple, but how it makes it so fast. I was thinking in terms of manually cutting and cleaning a thread like I’d do with a die, and that’d take basically forever…

Yeah, I wouldn’t usually trust a calculator without measuring- this all started out because I asked DT “what length spokes for a BR2250 wheel, so I can get some spares”, since that’s basically what I’m making. Same rims, same hubs. And they don’t know! So they said “Yeah, use the calculator” I figured with it being their own calculator for their own parts it’d be alright, more fool me.

To be fair, all the measurements, hub numbers etc are actually right.

It’s quite interesting to go and see threads being rolled, and how bloody fast it actually is. Went to one of our suppliers of engine bolts and they were putting the (hot rolled) threads on in a couple of seconds per bolt.
Would have taken me five minutes (at least) to do each one with a manual die, and the threads would have been on the piss too……..

OK, not interesting. Well, only to engineers.

It is interesting but I are an engineer 🙂 Company I used to work for made studs for holding gearbox cases together (amongst other things). You just touch the blank rod on the rollers, instant thread.

Looked a bit like this:

I love that threads are named after the motorway nearest their place of manufacture. “Oh yes, definitely an M6, that one!”

Back to the OP. When I was building a lot of trailer wheels I used kiddies bike rims then cut my own spokes and built then onto custom hubs. I used the cheapy cycle tool but rather than their jig I just bought the head, fitted it to a bar then popped that into the electric drill. Actually worked very well. Nice straight threads, never had one fail. I’m sure not as good Ben’s machine but I got change from a tenner (Edit: Seems they still sell the head but its £25 now, this was a few years ago).

Here is my tool:

Old spoke making machine:

Antique spoke making.

Posted by Kinetics on Tuesday, November 3, 2015

New spoke making machine:

New spoke making.

Posted by Kinetics on Tuesday, November 3, 2015

nickjb – I’ve seen a few like that, and Hozan make a slightly posher version – I was always worried about getting the thread length consistent with that.

Try

http://www.RyanBuildsWheels.com

He has a spoke cutting machine and will probably correct them for you for a small fee…

Cheers Ben! All clippered and rollered. Love that machine!

No problem 😉