Wheelworks.co.nz, Handbuilt wheels by Tristan Thomas

I received this question in an email conversation I’ve been having with a gentleman from the USA…I’ve been thinking about triplet patterns quite a bit lately so I though I’d share my thoughts and try and answer some questions.

Speaking of hubs and dish, it seems like you’ve kinda solved that
problem with your triplet spoke pattern setup on that Tune-XR300 setup
that you built.  From those pics, it looks like one could use any 32h
hub with a 24h rim, yes?  I also noticed that you laced the non-drive
side spokes with the heads in.  Any particular reason why?  Are the
tensions in the NDS spokes the same as the DS ones now?

Tune Mag180 Triplet rear hub - note only 8 non-driveside spokes

The ‘triplet’ pattern consists of 24 spokes.  On the driveside (DS) there are 16 spokes laced 3-cross, on the non-driveside (NDS) there are 8 spokes laced 1-cross.  Because there are only 8 NDS spokes every second spoke on the NDS flange is skipped.  There are triplet-specific hubs:  Tune do a custom triplet version of their Mag180 rear hub, and USA wheelbuilder Troy Watson uses a custom-built White Industries hub designed for triplet lacing.  USA company Alchemy Bicycle Works will have a triplet version of their soon to be released ORC rear hub.

Campagnolo / Fulcrum and Corima use similar concepts for some of their factory wheels.  The concept of mis-matched drilling is not new and dates back as early as the wheels on a Model T.

By lacing the NDS with the heads in the flange spacing is effectively widened which builds a laterally stiffer wheel.  Trying to lace a traditional heads-in / heads-out pattern would be difficult because of the tight bends the spokes would be forced to make in the 1-cross pattern.  Lacing the NDS spokes radially would work well and remove any torsional load from these spokes.

The driveside spokes leave most hubs close to a perfect 90 degree tangent.  Torsional stiffness is very good and the wheels looks great.

Spoke tension of the NDS tends to be 90% of DS…this allows the DS spoke tension to be lower and the wheel to be built more like a front wheel where all spokes are close to 100kgf rather than 120kgf on the DS but only ~60kgf for NDS as in a typical rear wheel.

The triplet pattern is quite good but suffers a couple of shortfalls:

You can only use a 24h combination – If the rider warrants a wheel with 28 spokes then this pattern will not work.

Should a NDS spoke break the wheel will go so far out of true that it will not rotate inside the frame and will be unridable.   I’ve built a few wheels in this pattern and the only problem I’ve had was with a NDS nipple failing – the possible cause was the higher than normal NDS tension combined with the nipple exit angle and perhaps a spoke which was ~1mm too short and cut at a non-perpendicular angle.  I rebuilt the wheel with nipples from a different batch and rebuilt the NDS side with longer spokes and there haven’t been any more problems.

The wheel is also quite difficult to build…the ‘rules’ are totally different than for a normal lacing pattern so it takes a bit of thinking, especially with the first few wheels.  Even now I have to take my time and really think about what I’m doing as it’s very different to lacing and tensioning standard 24×2.

The rim needs to be very stiff for this pattern.  The XR-270 and XR-300 work well but a lighter rim would not work as well.  WeightWeenies member mises has an Alex R400 laced triplet on his travel bike but this is the only example I can remember seeing of a light (400 gram) rim being used in this pattern however the XR-200 might be stiff enough for a light rider.

I took the fancy new Olympus E510 digital SLR camera up to Mt Vic to watch the PNP-hosted Nationals round today.  The early rain and showers made for some great carnage on the first morning lap but it dried out quickly and by the afternoon’s Pro-Elite race the mud had made way for dust.

DT Swiss have recently added white as a colour option to some of their products.  Competition and Aerolite spokes will be offered in white (at exorbitant prices!) some drillings of RR1.1 and XR42.d rims, and the 240s hubs are also available in this colour.  Here in NZ the white spokes have yet to arrive, and frankly I’d be surprised if they do.

These pictures were taken with a fancy new Olympus E510 digital SLR…photography is new to me so I’ve got a lot to learn to be able to drive this camera.

These hubs are for a ZTR Race build with CX-Rays…stay tuned.

The Stan’s ZTR Race are a rim I’ve wanted to build with since their release mid 2008 – a claimed weight of 284g makes them lighter than most carbon rims and is almost 150g lighter per rim than a Mavic 317.  Light weight is one thing, but can they be stiff and durable?

I was reluctant to recommend these to anyone before getting some first-hand info on how they build and how they ride; after all to finish first – first you must finish.  Luckily XC racer Cameron Wood approached me for a pair of wheels and we a struck a deal where he’ll be wearing Wheelworks kit for this year of mtb racing and rolling along on these wheels.

Cameron is a proper weightweenie:  We were arguing over a difference of 3 grams between quick-release levers :-) He requested these rims and I was more than happy to build them up and let him guinea-pig them.  I managed to talk some sense into him with hubs and we settled on DT 240s units – very durable despite being “very light” rather than “exceptionally light.”

Because of the light weight of the rims Stan’s has a few rules on building them; max spoke tension is a very low 97kgf and the choice of hubs is limited due to their bracing angle / nondrive spoke tension.  The DT Swiss 240 is actually on the ‘banned’ list but after doing some math I figured they must mean the 6-bolt version as the Centerloc rotor version has a more suitable bracing angle than the Hope Pro2 and Chris King ISO which are both on the “ok” list.  I ran my thoughts past the knowledgeable Bryce at the Stan’s importer and he agreed with my logic.

Spokes are DT Swiss Revolutions matched with black aluminum nipples.  The brake rotors pictured are Stan’s aluminum and tyres are Stan’s Raven – both lightweight items.

1280g is very light for a pair of mountain bike wheels.  The wheels felt stiff when I was building them but I didn’t have the chance to confirm this with the lateral stiffness jig – I’ll do this at some point though.  If the durability of the ZTR Race rims is as good as the other Stan’s rims then they’re onto a winner.

Getting below 1350g for a pair of alloy road wheels is difficult – especially when you want to keep both lateral stiffness and durability as high as possible.

These wheels use an American Classic 32 hole rear hub and Alchemy ELF 24 hole front.  The American Classic isn’t my favorite hub to build with because of it’s narrow flange spacing but I knew Stuart had another pair of wheels which I’d built for him using this hub and lateral stiffness was sufficient.

Rims are the light weight Kinlin XR-200.  This was the first pair of wheels I’d built using this rim and I must say that I was quite impressed with the weight and apparent stiffness of the rim.  At 381g and 384g these rims are very light for an alloy clincher.

DT Swiss Revolution spokes and gold nipples hold everything together.  I had some custom gold decals made for both hubs and both Stuart and myself were impressed enough with the results that I’ll be offering these decals with any suitable hubs from now on.

In a lot of cases I don’t meet face-to-face with the people I build wheels for however in this case I had the pleasure of spending 4 days riding around the East Cape on a supported tour which Stuart orgainzed.

Rohloff recently announced they had produced their 10,000th Speedhub14 internal gearbox rear hub.  PureSports were lucky and managed to acquire a red hub with the serial number 10,001 which I built into a Stan’s ZTR Flow 26″ rim with Sapim Race spokes and nipples.

The new red colour is fantastic!  At Eurobike this year Tune announced a lightweight shifter for the Speedhub 14 (photos courtesy of Light-Bikes.com) which would be a great match.