36 spoke rim and hub with 18 spokes


18 spokes on 36 hole rim and hub

Did a quick build using a leftover 24" 36 hole rim and 36 hole hub, but using only 18 spokes. This is a great way to save some weight on over-built wheels for kids bikes. This wheel is a little out of the ordinary for the following reasons:

  • only 18 spokes using every second hole in the 36h rim;
  • non-disc side has 6 spokes laced radially;
  • disc side has 12 spokes laced 1x. There's a couple of things to note about the 1x lacing. Firstly, if this was a rim brake wheel you could just lace it radially both sides (provided the hub flanges can handle radial lacing). Secondly, while 1x lacing may seem dangerously close to radial lacing, with only 12 spokes on a 18 hole flange, the crossing is more like 2x. This pattern seemed to produce the best spoke/rim angle of pretty much 90 deg.

18 spokes on 36 hole rim and hub

I used spocalc to work out the spoke lengths. The 12 spokes 1x on the NDS are a bit tricky to get calculated, but for spocalc you do the calculation as if it was for 24 paired spokes 1.275 cross.

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