How To Lace Every Common Spoke Pattern : In-Depth Guide to Radial, 1X, 2X, 3X And 4X

hey everyone welcome back to the channel hope you had an amazing week as usual now you probably guessed what this video is about but yeah wheel builds i did a wheel build tutorial about three or four years ago certainly quite early into this channel and it's done pretty well it's been ticking along over the years and it's sitting at just under half a million views which is pretty nuts but as popular as it is it certainly wasn't a perfect video like i mentioned it was early on in my channel my audio wasn't great i added some music just a little bit too loud and i still get messages from people who can't quite work out how to do the key spokes so i think there's room to improve on that description but anyway got my hex here it is due time some new wheels now i must admit these wheels have been absolutely solid there's nothing wrong with them but i've got new spotted parts i've got some new light bicycle rims they want me running some nice shiny new parts so it'd be rude of me to say no to some new wheels i'm also going to use this time to say a massive thanks to chris king for their hubs they've been amazing they've coped so well over the last couple of years i haven't really had any issues with them but i would like just a few more engagement points 72 it's not a low amount but for trials riding more is usually better so i'm moving from 72 engaging points to over 600 with industry 9 hubs and i'll show you those in a little while but back to this particular video rather than show you the full process from lacing to truing to the final wheel i'm going to break it up a little bit and i'm going to concentrate purely on the lacing for this video i'll then make a part two which is going to be adding the tension truing stressing the wheel all that stuff and that's going to be a future video anyway i think that's enough chat i'm going to stick the camera on the roof and start explaining what parts i'm using and then we'll get onto the lacing so let's do it before we do the lacing i'm just going to run through what i'll be using from the hubs rims spokes nipples to the tools i'm going to be using to lace the wheel the hubs i'm using are the new industry 9 hydra hubs got the pair front and rear for my bike the rim i'll be using is light bicycles recon rim this is the rm2605 it's 38 mil wide deep profile and has been the rim i've been using for the last three years and i've never broken one because it's carbon and really wide it's the stiffest rim i've ever used and perfect for trials riding spokes i'm using are the spokes i always use i swear by these i've hardly ever broken one in the 10 15 years however long i've been using them they're sapping double butted spokes and yeah super light super strong perfect spokes if you are a mountain biker or a road rider or someone who's going to be riding in muddy wet salty conditions i do recommend using brass nipples but because i ride my bike pretty much only in the dry i tend to use alloy nipples a lot of people are scared of alloy nipples they think they're just gonna snap but like i said i've been running my wheels for two years and i've never broken one i don't ride in particularly wet conditions so corrosion is less of an issue and like my original video i still get all my spokes from a bike shop called tarty bikes based in the uk but will ship worldwide they have their own spoke calculator which you do have to phone up for them to use but it is the most accurate i found by far you just tell them what rim and hub you have and they'll calculate the spoke length and i've never had it wrong having a wheel truing stand will make finishing the wheel so much easier but for lacing the wheel we don't actually need one of these for actually lacing the wheel a nipple driver will make life a hell of a lot easier these are just such a super quick easy way of threading the nipple onto the spoke but you don't need one of these they just make life a little bit easier now a nipple driver tool fits a fairly traditional style of nipple with a screwdriver slot at the back but a lot of modern nipples actually come with torx fitting where this won't fit so if you do have a modern wheel which takes torque style nipples then it's a worthy investment to get a torx nipple driver and speaking of making life easier this is a nipple holder or it would be if the nipple holding part hadn't broken this is a great tool for stopping your nipples from falling into the rim and just rattling about and getting lost it holds onto the nipple just the right tension that you can put it through the rim thread it onto the spoke and it doesn't get lost inside the rim an alternative to this is just using a spoke this works simply by threading the nipple on backwards which then allows you to put it through the rim stopping it getting lost inside titty bikes usually supply an extra spoke or two so you can simply use one of those spares as a nipple holder okay now that i've shown you what kit i'm using what tools i'm going to be using it's time to build the wheel now there's a lot of different lacing patterns you can do when building a traditional spoked wheel like this i'm not going to go through all of them but i will cover some of the most common and it's actually a really simple trick which works for all of these lacings that i'm going to show you that allows you to get them first time every time pretty easily now i tried to explain this in my original wheel build and despite it being quite an easy concept it can be a little bit tricky to explain so rather than show you in real life with the kit i've got here i've made some drawings so let's go to those so i'm finally putting my art and design diploma to good use i've drawn the components i'm gonna use and as you can see here i've added quite a few layers to show you a few different lacing patterns i want this one to be super detailed so i've gone the extra mile this took me hours to do i'm not going to show you all the spoke patterns just because there's far too many i'm going to show you some of the more common ones including radial one cross two cross three cross and maybe even four cross as well the technique i'm going to show you works for all of these spoke patterns and it doesn't matter what wheel size you have or how many spoke holes you have no matter the lacing type your wheel size the spoke count these are the two most important spokes in the whole wheel build and it's pretty vital you get them in the right spot fortunately the technique i'm going to show you makes it really easy to get these in exactly the right spot no matter what lacing pattern you're going to do it even allows you to have different spoke patterns on either side of the wheel so say if you want to have three cross on one side radial on the other this technique will allow you to do that one word of advice before you get started is to check whether the rim you're going to use is asymmetrical or not and by that i mean do your spokes come out directly in the middle of the rim or do they come out on one side if they come out on one side that is an asymmetrical rim it will have a left and right hand specific side so it's important you get this the right way around matching your hubs when you're lacing your wheels if you get your asymmetrical rim lined up correctly then it'll just build up like normal if you have what looks like a normal non-asymmetric rim then you don't have to worry so much about a left and right hand side although one thing to bear in mind is your spoke holes might actually be drilled at a slight angle so just be aware that when you're fitting your spokes this angle is pointing to the correct flange the last thing to note before we move on is that i build my wheels vertically with the valve hole at the 12 o'clock position so later on when i'm doing the lacing i'll be referring to a left and right hand side of the valve so to avoid confusion make sure your wheel is lined up the same as mine with the valve at the 12 o'clock position so i think that's enough prep work let's move on and i'll show you the different lacing patterns and the pros and cons radial as the name suggests is where the spokes come radially out of the hub now you don't really see radial that often these days unless it's a super light road bike or a retro mountain bike so what are the good things about radial well first of all it's the lightest because the spokes are taking the shortest route from the hub to the rim the shorter the spokes the less material the less material the lighter the weight supposedly the wheel is going to be stiffer side to side as well this is because the spokes are more triangulated and the more triangulated the spokes the stiffer the wheel will be so if you have a lightweight super flimsy rim lacing the wheel readily will actually help the wheel stiffness a bit now that is just theory i don't know whether it does actually make the wheel stiffer i've run radial wheels in the past and i've never noticed any difference but being a trials rider i do tend to use a thicker sturdier rims so maybe i would notice the extra stiffness if i wasn't already using a fairly stiff rim one other advantage to radial lacing is if you do snap a spoke it's a lot easier to replace it because you don't have to interweave it in between all the other crosses and this lack of interweaving makes radial lacing the easiest type of wheel to build but what are the disadvantages to a radial wheel now there's only really a couple of disadvantages to radial but unfortunately they are really big issues to explain i've got a closer illustration of a hub with the spokes now with radial spokes coming directly out of the hub you're actually pulling against the smallest section of material this unfortunately means that some hubs can snap when built regularly some hub manufacturers will actually design their wheels to be run radial and to get around the flanges snapping they'll simply just make the flanges thicker by adding this extra material you're just making it less likely to snap the flange if you are thinking of lacing a wheel readily i would recommend looking for a hope that is reinforced that said if your hub does have just fairly standard flanges it's not definitely going to snap but you are taking the risk the other major disadvantage to radial is that the spokes don't handle torque very well this means i wouldn't recommend radial wheels if you're using a disc brake or on the drive side of the rear hub this is why you'll nearly always see radial wheels on a bike that uses rim brakes you might see radial on the rear of a road bike but you won't see it on the drive side so the pros it's the lightest it's the easiest to lace and it makes the wheel's stiffest lattery however cons that's more stressful on the hub and it's not great with handling torque even though the cons are fairly big cons there's still definitely situations where a radial wheel is a good idea now maybe you don't have the correct length spokes for radial so let's start to add some crosses to them so the next logical step from radial is one cross i've removed some spokes here to make it easy to see and as the name suggests the spokes literally cross each other just one time now one cross is a slightly weird lacing pattern it's one you won't see that often and is usually used if you don't have the correct length spoke for radial one cross is also fairly unique in that there's actually quite a few different ways to lace the wheel but i'll go into more detail about that when i show you how to lace this before that though like radial what are the pros and cons because the spokes are now pulling at a slight angle it's effectively making the flange thicker and like i mentioned with radial some hub manufacturers will make their flanges thicker to cope with the extra stress so by angling the spokes you're effectively doing that job for them but that said the angle these spokes are leaving the hub isn't that much so the thickness of material you're pulling against is still pretty small it's going to be slightly less stressful on the hub than radial but you do still risk snapping the flange in the same vein of being slightly less stressful on herb compared with radial it'll also cope slightly better with torque but like i mentioned with the flange strength it's only marginal gains and i wouldn't recommend one cross for disc brake use or on the drive side rear wheel so what are the pros to one cross well you get a slightly stronger hub flange and it is slightly better for torque however the cons are it's not as light as radial and it's still not suitable for discs or drive side use and this to me is why one cross is quite an odd lacing pattern you don't get the full advantages of radial and you don't get any of the full advantages of adding more crosses it's kind of like the weird kid next door that your parents always ask you to go play with it's fine but there are better options out there and speaking of better options let's add across and move to two cross so for your viewing pleasure here we have a two cross wheel i've removed some spokes so it's easier to see the pattern and as the name suggests the spokes cross each other at two points unlike one cross two crosses now starting to become a much more practical lacing pattern if we go back down to the hub flange you'll see the spokes are now leaving at much more of an angle like i mentioned with one cross the more of an angle the spokes leave the flange the more material they'll be pulling against which artificially makes the hub flange thicker by simply adding an extra cross with two cross you're going to reduce the stresses on the hub flange significantly not only that but now your wheel will cope significantly better with torque forces two cross is the minimum number of crosses i would suggest with a disc brake however i wouldn't recommend two cross if you're thinking of going for a big rotor like a 200 mil in that instance i'll suggest at least three cross but if you plan on using a small rotor then it should be fine and likewise it should be fine on the drive side rear if you're a lighter rider now going back to lateral stiffness like i mentioned earlier radial is supposedly the stiffest laterally so if you're using a lightweight rim you may find it's slightly easier to actually buckle the wheel once you start to add more crosses but it's all a compromise that stiffness you lose laterally you more than make up with the ability to cope with torque so what are the pros of two cross well it's less stress on hub flange and it can handle more torque but what about the cons well it's heavier that's because the spokes are now longer so obviously longer spokes more material more material is heavier it's also harder to lace and replace a broken spoke now that you've got the spokes crossing and interweaving over each other replacing a broken spoke means you have to thread it through all the other ones when i say it's harder to lace yeah it's going to be slightly harder than one cross but if you follow the techniques i'm going to show you it actually works out to be pretty easy the last con is the potential for reduced lateral stiffness this is more noticeable if you're running a lightweight rim that's more flexible but if like me you're running quite a burly stiff carbon rim then you're not going to notice this so much so you may notice there's more cons than our pros however in my opinion the benefit of the pros far outweighs any negative effect of the cons so there you go that's two cross the start of the more practical lacing patterns let's step this up once more and go to three cross so here we have three cross again here's a couple of layers removed so you can see the pattern more easily and of course no prizes for guessing how many times the spokes cross over each other this time yeah if it wasn't obvious three cross means the spokes crossed three times now one of those crosses is right down on the hub flange so these can be hard to miss when you first look at a wheel but no matter if the cross is down at the hub in the middle or further towards the rim it counts as a cross three cross is by far the most common spoke lacing pattern you're going to find out in the real world it has the best compromise between lateral stiffness weight and ability to handle extreme torques the spokes are now pulling at such an angle there's a lot more material to resist the high forces and also because one spoke has been pulled one way one spokes being pulled the other way you're actually compressing them together down here which again helps to make the hub last a lot longer like how i mentioned with one and two cross the wheel in theory won't be as stiff laterally side to side i feel it's my duty to mention this however in the real world it's a non-issue your wheel won't be weaker it won't magically buckle after every single ride if you build it right so don't worry about the theory of it being slightly less stiff laterally instead just be stoked that now you can pretty much run any rotor size that you want the higher angle the spokes are now leaving hub means you have little worry about snapping the flanges and the angles and extra spoke crossings mean it'll handle a load more torque and of course this is absolutely fine to run on the drive side rear so just like before let's go through the pros and cons for three cross starting with the pros i personally think that three cross has the best all-round strength there's a reason why three cross is the most common spoke lacing pattern you'll find it anywhere from cross-country bikes road bikes downhill bikes even really cheap bikes you find in walmart three cross has one of the best all-round abilities to resist side-to-side buckling and the torque from drivetrains and bigger brakes which leads me to the second pro just how well it can cope with the torque like i mentioned earlier three cross will cope absolutely fine even with some of the biggest rotors you can get and also cope with trials riding type torque on the drive chain but how about the cons now i've only written one down here and that's that is heavier however compared with two cross you're not going to notice the extra weight for three cross the only time you're really going to notice any difference in weight is say compared with radial but even then we're only talking about a few extra grams now i was going to mention that this is slightly harder to lace but compared with two cross it's not it's pretty much exactly the same technique and likewise i could mention it's harder to replace a spoke if it snaps but again compared to two cross it's pretty much exactly the same i mean yeah compared with radial it is going to be harder to lace and harder to replace a spoke but if you want your wheel to cope with the extra forces of a bigger disc brake or if you're putting lots of torque through the drivetrain then it's definitely worth a little extra faff to get a three cross lacing pattern so there we go that is three cross now there's only one more i'm going to show you and that is four cross so this is a four cross wheel a little bit like one cross it's a slightly unusual lacing pattern much like you might choose to use one cross if you don't have the correct length spokes for radial you might choose to go for cross if you don't have the correct length spokes for three cross and it's for that very reason that for my personal wheels i'm about to build i'm actually choosing to go far across myself so once again remove some spokes to give you a clearer view and even though it may only look like it crosses three spokes it does actually cross over this spoke down here right down at the head so a little bit like three cross it can be hard to miss that final cross right down at the flange so despite far cross being my personal choice for my wheels there are some disadvantages the main disadvantage is as you can see here is starting to get pretty busy down on the hub flange if you have a smaller flange there's simply not going to be enough room for the spokes to smoothly cross over each other so on a smaller flanged hub it may not be physically possible to even run far across but on the plus side as you might imagine far cross has no issue with running bigger rotors with the extra support of all the extra crosses and the angles the spokes are going at four cross is excellent at resisting torque stress the other bonus is just look how much more flange material there is to resist cracking you now have two spokes which are compressing towards each other which the hub can cope with much better than just trying to shear off a smaller part of the flange so again the pros and cons starting with the pros four cross has excellent resistance to torque like i mentioned you can pretty much run any size rotor you want without worry for cross might also be a good option if you're on an e-bike or if you're just worried about any extra torque you're going to put on the drivetrain four cross will have no problems with any demanding drive train loads and also like i mentioned it's less stressful on the flange just because you're pulling against the most material possible and for the cons well the list has got slightly longer than when we looked at three cross got to start with saying it's heavier yet again over 3 cross 2 cross 1 cross radial especially radial 4 cross will be heavier because again the spokes are going to be even longer it also might not fit a smaller hub the industry 9 hydra hubs i'm going to be using have medium to large size flanges if you are using a hub with a smaller flange then yeah you may not physically bear to fit four cross then lastly it's harder to lace now i know i didn't mention this in the three cross build but once the crossings start to get extra tight down on the flange it does make it slightly harder to lace the wheel and of course if you end up snapping a spoke then these tight crossings will make replacing it even harder so that is four cross and also concludes my introduction to the most common spoke lacing patterns i really hope my descriptions help find the best spoke pattern for you i'm now going to go through the individual spoke patterns and show you how to lace them so radial is quite a unique pattern to build if you've been watching this video from the start you'll have seen that all of the patterns i've shown you have color coordinated spokes if we take a side view of a hub for example normally the spokes would alternate from each side of the flange and because of this i build a wheel in quarters however with radial all the spokes will go in the same side of the flange so rather than use four different coloured spokes for each side of both flanges we've only got two colours pink and yellow because we're only going to use one side of each flange you may also notice the odd one out we have a single green spoke i've highlighted this one because this is the key spoke this is the most important spoke in the entire wheel build and one that you definitely need to get in the right place now another reason why radial is unique is that there's no second key spoke if you watch some of the later lacing patterns i'm going to show you there's actually two key spokes two spokes are absolutely vital you get in the right place and yes technically radial does have two key spokes but because of the way i'm going to show you how to lace this wheel it's not actually as vital to know about it the last unique thing about radial is there's actually a couple of ways you can actually put the spoke through the flange and if you're a wheel builder you may have already noticed i've drawn it a certain way this is the way i personally like to lace my radial wheels but not everyone does it this way personally i don't think there's a right and wrong way to do it but i'll explain what i do and why before i can explain fully it's worth noting that the head of the spoke is broken into two halves you have the fatter domed section this is the part that stops the spoke from threading all the way through the hub and is known as the head of the spoke the other part is the near 90 degree bend in the spoke and this is called the shoulder so later on if i'm talking about head so i'm talking about shoulders i'm not talking about washing my hair i'm just talking about which side of the spoke is going on which side of the flange so for example the one on the left here has the head on the inside of the flange and the shoulder on the outside whereas the one on the right here has the head on the outside and the shoulder on the inside so when i mention heads in shoulders out this is what i mean and if i'm talking heads out shoulders in then this is what i mean if you've built a ready wheel or seen one in the real world then it may look something a little like this although you have to excuse my fairly bad drawing on this one if we go to a slightly better drawn version you can see all the shoulders on the inside and all the heads are on the outside i'd say this is the most common way that people build a radial wheel however it's not the way that i do it i actually do it the opposite way with the heads on the inside and the shoulders on the outside some people may say that this is the wrong way to do it but i've personally done this with my own wheels in the past i've done it with other people's wheels and i'll explain why i think this is a slightly better way of doing it so i've drawn a quick hub side profile here and this is what it would look like with all the heads on the outside and shoulders on the inside and likewise this is what it looks like the way i do it with the heads on the inside and the shoulders on the outside i should probably point out that yes this is a disc hub and yes i know i said i don't recommend radial with disc hubs but just imagine this is a non-disc front hub so here's another angle of what radial would look like with the heads on the outside and shoulders on the inside and the reason why i don't use this pattern is because the distance between the spokes isn't as wide as it could be by lacing the wheel the opposite way with the heads on the inside and shoulders on the outside you're making the distance between the spokes a little bit wider and i think most people would agree that a wider triangle is going to be stiffer than a narrower triangle so simply by building a radial wheel with the heads on the inside shoulders on the outside you're potentially getting a slightly stiffer wheel the other advantage of going heads in shoulders out is that it's a lot easier to fit the spokes if you've already got a cross pattern on one side for example you might want to go three cross on the drive side rear to handle the x torque forces but you still may want to be radial on the non-drive side to save some weight by having the heads on the inside and the shoulders on the outside it makes it a lot easier to thread the spokes through the gaps in the cross pattern on the drive side if you put the spokes going in the opposite way with the heads on the outside and the shoulders on the inside it makes it a lot harder to get the spokes in between the crosses that have already been set so to me doing it the way i do it is a massive benefit for ease of lacing if you've already got a cross pattern on one side of the wheel anyway that's enough chat about heads and shoulders and why i build radial the way i do let's get on to actually building it like i mentioned earlier we only have two coloured spokes this means we build the wheel in two halves so this means we can get rid of the second half spokes and just concentrate on the first half but before we do the full half we're going to concentrate on the key spoke once you've fitted this to the correct place on the hub and the correct place on the rim the rest of the 16 spokes on this half will just naturally fit into place now i'm mentioning 16 because this is a 32 hole wheel so obviously half of 32 is 16. once we start to alternate the flange holes this number will half again and we'll be talking about eight spokes but we'll talk about that more when we get into the later spoke lacings so how do we know how to get the key spoke in exactly the right place well fortunately there's a really easy system to do this which works for radial one cross two cross three cross four cross and i'm going to show you how to do that right now so if we go back to this angle of a hub and again ignore the fact there's a disc mount let's pretend this is a non-disc hub now if your hub has a logo you want to be able to see that through the valve hole you don't get any structural advantage to this you just get bonus points from other wheel builders if your hub doesn't have a logo then you can ignore this first step so to begin find your hub logo if you have one and find the center most point from that center point draw an imaginary line down through the hub towards you over the flange you're about to lace now at this point on a non-disc front hub don't worry too much about which side you're starting on this technique works on either side of the flange with no differences once you've drawn that imaginary line down through the hub towards you you want to look for the spoke hole on the flange that's closest to that center line now if that line happens to end up exactly between two spoke holes then i'd recommend choosing the hole to the left but more than likely you'll have one hole which is obviously closer to the center line this will be your key spoke position for radial this is going to be the first spoke you put in and the one that sets the rest of the pattern so just to recap you find that center line from the logo on the hub follow it through towards you through the flange you're about to lace find the spoke hole that's closest to that center line and that is your key spoke hole now it's simply a case of passing that first key spoke through the hole now if you want to build it the way i build it again that's heads on the inside and shoulders on the outside with a spoke coming towards you if you want to build it the other way with the heads on the inside shoulders on the outside then the spoke will be put in going away from you now it's completely up to you if you want to go ahead and add that key spoke to the rim now or if you want to put the rest of the 16 spokes in it's my personal preference to put all 16 spokes in now simply because it makes the wheel build just a little bit quicker however with all the spokes in it can make it a little bit confusing to keep track of the keyspoke so when i'm putting the rest of the spokes in i normally keep hold of the key spoke in some way either with a finger a thumb whatever i just keep holding the key spoke so i don't lose it now once all 16 spokes are in i can then start fitting them to the rim starting with the key spoke if you are going to fit the key spoke as soon as you fitted it fine if you're going to fit all 16 that's fine as well just imagine they're kind of dangling down from the hub now using the technique i showed you by following the center line of the hub and finding the spoke hole closest to it we found the position of the key spoke on the hub but where does it go on the rim so like i mentioned with the valve at the 12 o'clock position the key spoke goes from the hub and we're actually going to put that in the first hole to the left of the valve hole so once again that first key spoke we follow that up to the rim and that goes to the first hole to the left of the valve now that you've got that spoke in the rim be careful that the hub doesn't twist around on its axis this is less important on a radial wheel because the spoke is pretty much in the center of the logo the wheel will still build up pretty much the same anyway but as soon as you start building a wheel with a lacing pattern that crosses it's vital that you don't let the hub spin so it's good practice not to let it spin now either so once your key spoke is in place on the hub and the rim you can start adding the rest of the 16 spokes and this is as simple as going every second spoke hole on the rim once all 16 spokes are in place it should look like this don't worry too much if your spokes are protruding just slightly out of the rim this would be more common on a shallow rim but as soon as you add the other half of the spokes these will actually be pulled further into the rim and speaking of the other half of the spokes it's time to fit those to add the second half of the spokes is actually easier than the first half because you don't have to worry about a key spoke position because we've already set all 16 spokes on the first flange the radial pattern is already set so it doesn't really matter which hole you start with on the second half as long as you make sure the second spokes go readily from the hub in a straight line to the rim then the pattern will be good so simply a case of choosing a hole threading the spokes through to match the pattern you did in the first half either heads in shoulders out or shoulders out heads in and then you have a choice of either fitting that to the rim now or do what i do and fit all 16 spokes now to save a little bit of time so once your second half the spokes are fitted it will look something like this like i mentioned as long as these second half spokes you're going to put in are going straight readily from the hub to the rim then the pattern will be good because we've already fitted the first half it'll be fairly obvious where the second half goes pretty much just in the remaining holes left one thing you may find if you build with the heads in and shoulders out is that the spokes bow quite a lot if you're finding your spokes a little on the short side then attempting to straighten the spokes now will actually help you get a little bit more reach to get the spokes running a little bit straighter it's as simple as squeezing both sides together what i mean by that is get a hand on one side get a hand on the other side and just squeeze the two sides together it's a really simple method to do and works really well it doesn't damage the spokes in any way and now they'll be running a lot straighter towards the rim so there we go fingers crossed that made sense and if this is your first time building a radial wheel you've been following along perhaps i really hope this has worked and you've now got a nice looking wheel in front of you so let's step this up a little bit and i'll show you how to build one cross so after building radial which is the simplest lacing pattern we've got one cross and as you can tell by the extra colors this is going to be slightly more complicated and it's actually potentially more complicated than two or three cross because of the different options you got down at the flange but i'll take you through a few different options and once you've decided which one is best for you i'll take you through the process of getting both key spokes in the right place because yep there's going to be two key spokes in this wheel build and by the end of this you should have a one cross laced wheel so ignoring the special colours for the two key spokes you'll find we have four colours in this wheel we've got silver blue pink and yellow so whereas radial was built in two halves we're gonna build a one cross two cross three cross and four cross in quarters because now we're going to start offsetting the spokes on either side of the hub flange now i have seen some people still build one flange at a time but personally i don't think this is the best way to do it because a bit like i mentioned with radial if you've got a cross pattern on one side it's actually really hard to thread the spokes through as you'll have to interweave them in between the gaps in the spokes by breaking the wheel down into quarters working on one side of the flange at a time it makes it a lot easier to thread the spokes between the bigger gaps hopefully this sounds simple enough but don't worry if it doesn't once we start actually lacing the wheel this will make loads more sense so to start with we're going to work with the first eight spokes and again this is eight because it's a 32 hole wheel obviously if you're building a 24 28 or 36 or whatever that number is going to be different but it should be one quarter of your total spoke count and like radial we're going to concentrate on the first key spoke first just like with radial the key spoke is the most important spoke you're gonna put in a wheel so you need to get this one right but fortunately just like radial we can use the same trick to determine exactly where the key spoke goes on the hub i'll show this process again even though it's very similar to the radial just in case you skipped radial to find the lacing you're gonna use again ideally your hub will have a logo we're gonna try and line this up with the valve hole so you can see the logo through the valve and again this doesn't give any structural advantage it's just how professional wheel builders build their wheels if your hub doesn't have a logo then you can skip this step and just choose any hole to start with using the logo has no benefit other than lining it up with the valve hole and again i don't recommend one cross for a disc use so let's pretend this is a non-disc front hub so assuming you're building a one cross wheel on a non-disc front hub it really doesn't matter which side of the hope you start on so for finding the key spoke position let's assume your hub does have a logo just by eye you want to try and find the center point of that logo and then draw an imaginary line towards you through the hub and the flange you're about to lace now with radial we just decided which was the closest hole to the center line that we just drew however that is not the hole we're going to put the key spoke in for one cross now i absolutely love this rule for finding the first hole for the key spoke instead of putting a key spoke in the hole closest to the center line for one cross we're going to jump one spoke hole to the left now this is where the genius comes in if you want to do two cross you jump two holes to the left if you want to do three cross you jump three holes if you want to do four cross you jump four holes following this simple rule means your hub logo will always line up with the valve so just to quickly recap you find the center line of your hub logo draw an imaginary line towards you through the hub flange you're about to lace and instead of going to that first hole closest to that center line you jump one hole to the left once you've found your position for your keyspoke it's simply a case of inserting that into the hub now to complicate things a little bit much like radial you have a choice on which direction to put the spoke in whether it's heads on the outside shoulders on the inside or heads on the inside and shoulders on the outside now usually for lacing patterns with crosses i put the spokes in going away from me with the heads on the outside shoulders on the inside however i'll show you a few alternatives so for a moment let's imagine you've built it the way that i would usually build wheels with the heads on the outside and shoulders on the inside this is what it might look like once you've got the first eight spokes in normally when i build the second half of the flange i will alternate the spokes so instead of being heads out shoulders in the second half of this flange would be shoulders out and heads in i would then weave the spokes over under each other at the crossing point now the issue with doing it this way is that with one cross you may actually have to bend the spokes quite severely to get them to do the over under pattern now spokes can take quite a lot of abuse they can be bent quite far with not too many issues but at the same time you don't really want to bend them too much if you can avoid it now this bend won't be as pronounced with a smaller flange but you may find the bend is quite severe with a larger one so alternating the spokes and doing an over under pattern might actually work better with a smaller flange now the other option is to still alternate the spokes on each side of the flange but instead of doing an over under weave on the crossing point you can just let the spokes go their natural course and avoid bending them at all yet another option instead of alternating the spokes on the flange with the heads and shoulders out and shoulders out heads in you can just have all the spokes matching the same pattern and like radial you have a choice of having heads out like we have here and shoulders in or doing it the way i showed you the opposite way with this technique you're still going to have to have some kind of bend at the crossing point but it will be a less severe bend than having the spokes alternating heads in shoulders out shoulders out heads in but i must mention a disclaimer i've never actually built a one cross wheel which is crazy because i've built literal thousands of wheels as a mechanic but like i mentioned one cross is an unusual build and one that i'd usually avoid building either choosing to go radial or adding an extra cross with two cross or three cross so for the rest of this one cross tutorial i'm going to follow my usual pattern i use with two or three cross and alternate the spokes on the flange and then weave the spokes under over at the crossing point if you're a wheel builder and you've ever built one cross let me know down in the comments which method you prefer so now you can probably see why i think one cross is one of the more complex lacing patterns out there there's just so many different ways of doing it fortunately that's the most complex part covered now so let's get back to actually lacing the wheel so we should have the key spoke in its correct position which again is one spoke to the left of the spoke hole that's closest to the center line of the hub and to find its position on the rim is exactly the same as radial we just follow it up and it goes one spoke hole to the left of the valve this part is actually really easy to remember for all lacing patterns because the key spoke always goes in exactly the same position on the rim which is one hole to the left of the valve and like i mentioned you can fit the key spoke on its own solo without any of the other spokes or if you're like me you'll have all the other spokes kind of dangling down from the hub like so just remember when fitting the rest of the spokes that this is an alternating pattern so they'll be fitted every second hole on the flange like with radial just be careful that your hub doesn't twist around on its axis it didn't matter so much for radial but as soon as you start to cross the spokes it's absolutely vital that the hub doesn't spin around and face the other direction it's quite easy for the hub to do this without you noticing so make sure you're paying attention and it doesn't happen this was actually one of my biggest errors when i first started building wheels that the hub would spin around i wouldn't notice it and when i came to finish the pattern my valve no longer matched up with the logo on my hub and it's not just lining up with the logo that's the issue there's an even bigger issue but i'll explain that more when we get to three cross once you've fitted the rest of the first quarter to the hub you need to fit those to the rim now with radial we went every two holes but because we're building this wheel in quarters it's actually every fourth hole it is possible to do this by eye but i would recommend actually counting every fourth hole on the rim just to make sure you don't get it wrong because everyone makes mistakes like i mentioned i've built thousands of wheels and i still occasionally get this wrong if i don't count them out so it'd be one two three four spoken one two three four spoken and repeat that pattern until you've done the first quarter it doesn't matter which way you go with these spokes left or right as long as you count every fourth hole on the rim and once your first eight or whatever number your first quarter spokes are are fitted it should look a little like this once again a bit like radial don't worry if the spokes and nipples are actually protruding out of the rim ever so slightly again this is more noticeable with a shallower rim i've got the hub drawn here in its end twist position but actually at this point before you've set the pattern the spokes will naturally just want to sit readily from the hub and it's only actually after the third quarter of spokes that we twist the hub and set the correct angle of the spokes so yeah don't worry if at the moment the spokes look like the radial if you've got the key spoke in the correct position then later on when we twist the hub everything will be fine and yes i've just realized what i've accidentally drawn there's no way that would escape the comment section so if everything's going to plan we've got our first eight spokes all in place now we're gonna move on to the other flange and fit the second quarter spokes starting with the second key spoke and like i've mentioned this is the second most important spoke you're gonna put in a wheel so let's make sure you get this right so here we have the other side of the flange now i've actually drawn the rear hub here so i started on the drive side and now we're on the opposite side which is the disc side but like i said we're pretending this is a front non-disc hub also the angle these spokes are going in don't match a one cross wheel i actually copied this off my four cross wheel so the angle of your spokes may be different but it doesn't really matter as finding the second key spoke position works the same no matter what your lacing pattern firstly we want to identify the first key spoke then the trick is to follow that spoke down to the hub look to see where it enters the hub which if it isn't obvious is there and much like when we drew an imaginary line from the center of the hub logo towards you over the flange you're about to work on we do the same thing except this time starting with the key spoke position where it enters the hub so we draw a line directly through the middle of the hub towards you over the flange you're about to use spoke flanges are normally offset slightly from each other this means this imaginary line you just drawn through the hub may actually end up in between two spoke holes so then the trick is to follow the direction the first key spoke is going and it's that direction which indicates the position for the second key spoke another way of thinking about it is if you're looking at the hub from this direction the second key spoke goes on the right of that imaginary line so just to recap you follow the first key spoke to the hub draw an imaginary line from where that spoke enters the hub across the hub to the flange you're about to lace and either follow the direction that first key spoke is going to find the correct side of that imaginary line or the other way of doing it is just going to the right hand side of that imaginary line if you're looking at the hub from the opposite side insert the spoke matching the first quarter you did with shoulders on the inside and heads on the outside once fitted it will look a little something like this and as usual it's your choice if you want to fit the second key spoke to the rim now or do what i do and add the rest of this quarter no matter which way you choose we now need to get the second key spoke in the correct hole on the rim fortunately this couldn't be easier if we spin the wheel around so we're back on the original side where the first key spoke went to the left of the valve hole the second key spoke simply goes to the left of the first key spoke and this is the first hole to the left we're not skipping any holes on the rim here because the second key spoke is on the opposite flange this will set the alternating spoke pattern on the rim so just to quickly recap we've spun the wheel around so we're looking at it from the original direction where the first key spoke went to the left of the valve hole the second key spoke simply goes to the left of the first key spoke not skipping any holes on the rim and this pattern carries around the rim for the rest of the second quarter and there are two ways to make sure you get this right either counting every fourth hole on the rim or by putting the second quarter spokes to the left of the first quarter spokes either way once they're fitted it should look a little like this so now it's time to add the third quarter spokes these are the rest of the spokes on the original flange that you started on these are the blue colored ones that are used on the close-up flange picture when explaining the different lacing options when adding the third quarter spokes we're going to be doing alternating spokes on the flange so this means the spokes will be fitted coming towards you i found it easiest to fit these spokes the wheel facing the other way and then it's just case of pushing the spokes in away from you because we've already done the two key spokes it actually doesn't matter at all what order you put any of these spokes in so pick a hole put the spoke in and repeat until you've filled all the available holes in this flange now when fitting these third quarter spokes is the really important moment you make sure the hub has twisted the correct direction fitting these spokes will lock the twist into place so make sure you're rotating the hub anti-clockwise and when you're fitting these spokes it's now up to you whether you choose to go under over or just go straight over in one of the options i showed you earlier if you're going under over the easiest way to do it is thread the spoke between the biggest gap behind the spoke you're threading it through then back through this gap and it's ready to be put in the rim an easy way to remember where it goes on the rim is it goes left of the previous spokes that you put in or another way to know is it goes every two from the previous spokes you put in on this side flange then it's up to you if you want to count every four after that or if you want to just put it to the left of every other spoke that you put in once your third quarter spokes are fitted it should look like this now it's simply a case of adding the last quarter spokes and then your lacing should be finished to add this last quarter it's simply a case of repeating what we just did with the last lot of spokes it's exactly the same process only now you've got a slightly tighter gap in between the spokes to thread it but by building a wheel in quarters we've always left the biggest gaps to make it easier to thread the spokes through it should be fairly obvious where these spokes go on the rim because there's only going to be a few holes left just be aware when you're fitting these spokes it can be quite easy to scratch the rim but if you take your time and take a little care you can flex the spokes and get them fitted to the rim without scratching it at all and that is one cross done even though this isn't the most common lacing pattern in the world i felt it's still worth going into detail on how to do it so i hope this was useful if it was let me know so if you've skipped ahead in the video welcome to two cross or if you're watching this video from start to finish well done on getting this far like i mentioned a lot earlier in the video two cross is the start of the more practical lacing patterns now i wouldn't recommend two cross for extreme use but for road riding cross country or if you're a lighter rider is a perfectly usable pattern to use now the good thing about two crosses it's actually less complex than one cross but saying that it is still slightly more involved than radial there's now not as many usable options when you put the spokes into the hub although i'm sure there's many options i'm just going to show you one because i think this is the most useful just like one cross we're going to split lacing this wheel into quarters and again if you didn't see the one cross pattern that's because we alternate the spokes on each side of the flange so by concentrating on one side of the flange at a time it makes the build a lot simpler now when it comes to lacing two cross there's a chance you may be using a front disc hub or using it on the drive side of the rear whereas with one cross and radial we were pretending that you're building a non-disc front hub where it didn't matter which side of the hub you started on now that we are using a disk up or the drive side rear you need to start on the more important side first so on a front hub that would be the disk side and on the rear hub that would be the drive side so let's get started and just like one cross we're gonna concentrate on the first quarter and like i've mentioned previously my first quarter is eight spokes because it's a 32 hole wheel your number of spokes here may differ if it's a different number whole wheel but before we fit all eight spokes we're once again gonna concentrate on the first key spoke and like always this is the most important spoke in the whole wheel so let's get this right i'm gonna start on the rear wheel but this process is exactly the same front or rear just make sure you start on the more important side once again your hub may have a logo if it doesn't have a logo you can skip this very first process and just choose any hole to start on the only thing we're using the hub logo for is to line it up with the valve and by lining it up with the valve means you can see it through the valve hole which gives you bonus points from other wheel builders and it also gives another advantage of giving you more space to put a pump in between the spokes now if you've seen the radial and one cross tutorial you'll know what we do now if you haven't then here's a super easy way to find the position for this first key spoke the first step is to eyeball where you think the center of the hub logo is and from there draw an imaginary line down through the hub towards you and over the flange you're about to build again if you saw the radial build you know we put the spoke in the closest hole to that center line of the logo and then the one cross users will know we go one hole to the left for one cross and then the beauty is if you want to go two cross it's two holes three cross would be three holes four cross would be four holes by following this step and getting a key spoke in the correct place on the hub your hub logo will always be visible through the valve hole and it's such an easy technique to remember radial is closest to that center line of the logo one to the left one cross two to the left the two cross three for the left for three cross and so on now unlike one cross where you had many options on how to put this key spoke in either heads on the inside and shoulders on the outside or heads on the outside and shoulders on the inside i'd recommend with two cross and even three and four cross to start with the head on the outside and shoulders on the inside now i have heard other wheel builders say this is wrong saying that in theory this won't cope quite as well with torque however in the real world i don't think it makes any difference at all but it does make lacing the wheel a lot easier so there's no real right or wrong way to do this if you prefer to put the spoke in the opposite way to how i do it that's absolutely fine but for me personally this is the way i like to do it once you've got that first key spoke in position it's up to you if you want to fit that to the room now or do what i do and just fit the remaining eight spokes or whatever number you're working with to the flange in one go now remembering to match that pattern with shoulders on the inside heads on the outside and alternating every second spoke on the flange so once we found that key spoke position on the hub which remember we found by finding the hub logo drawing an imaginary line through the hub and then from the spoke hole that's closest to that center line counting two holes to the left now it's just a case of fitting it to the rim and just like radial two cross even three and four across the key spoke always goes to the same spot on the rim and that's one spoke to the left of the valve hole as you can see here i've added every single key spoke from radial one cross two cross three cross and four cross and it all go to the same spot in the rim which is one hole to the left of the valve so you're not skipping any holes it's just the very first hole to the left of the valve so after you've got it added to the hub and added to the rim that is your key spoke set in position while you've just got this single spoke in like i mentioned with radial and one cross it's vital that you don't let the hub twist around on its axis if you put the wheel down or just let go of the hub in any way it can be quite easy for it just to spin around and end up the opposite way around so that would be the drive side will now be away from you and the disc side on the front hope would also be away from you you always want to make sure the most important side is the one that's facing you throughout this first process having the hub spin around on its axis is one of the biggest mistakes i used to make as a wheel builder i'd put the wheel down for whatever reason come and pick it back up again the hub would spin around in its axis i wouldn't notice and then i'd be surprised when my spoke patterns didn't line up and i could no longer see the hub logo through the valve hole now it isn't just about being to see the hub logo you may notice there are different size gaps between the spokes the aim is to have the biggest gap lined up with the valve this is simply because it's easier to fit a pump head in a bigger gap here than it is one of the narrower ones these gaps are actually exaggerated once you get onto three and four across so making sure the hub doesn't twist on its axis make sure that everything lines up perfectly if you're like me and you have all your other spokes it's kind of dangling down here then it's time to fit those as well if you haven't fitted these yet that's absolutely fine just go back a step and i'll explain how to do that to fit the rest of your first quarter spokes to the rim is super easy just like before we're counting every four holes on the rim so that's one two three four one two three four and repeat until all spokes are fitted and just like before don't worry if the spokes and nipples are protruding from the rim just a little bit it's natural at this point that there might be a lot of slack in the spokes so having them protrude from the rim isn't a big issue once you fit the rest of the spokes this slack will go away and the spokes will be pulled further into the rim this is more noticeable on a shallow rim but you may find it still happens on quite a deep one too and just like before i've shown this hub in its final position fully twisted when you put the first eight spokes in everything will be so slack that the hub won't be twisted in its final position and the spokes will look more like their radial but don't worry as long as you got the keyspoke in the right place a little bit slack here is fine so don't worry how it looks so now that you have all your first eight spokes in it's time to get this second key spoke in the right spot in case you missed it all these wheels with a cross pattern have two key spokes so we've already done one and now it's time to do the other the good news is once you do have both of these in that's the hardest part done and the rest of the lacing is pretty simple but just like your first key spoke it's vital that the second key spoke is in the right spot so let me show you how to do that so this is the same image i used for one cross and the reason why i'm using this again is because the technique is actually exactly the same but again if you've skipped the one cross build and come straight to two cross let me show you how it's done now you can kind of ignore the angle these spokes are going at i actually took a photo of my wheel with a four cross build hence quite the tight angles your spokes may look different but it doesn't matter the technique is still the same firstly you want to locate your first key spoke then it's a case of following that down towards the hub and taking note of where it enters the flange and just like when we fitted the first key spoke where we drew an imaginary line from the logo across to what the flange we're going to be working on we're going to do the same thing here except from where the spoke enters the hub so draw an imaginary line over the hub towards the flange you're gonna work on because if i didn't mention it the second key spoke goes on the other flange and speaking of flanges both sides are actually offset ever so slightly so it's more than likely that this imaginary line will end up in between two spoke holes to find the correct hole there's a couple of ways you can do it one technique is just to follow the direction the first key spoke is going and that directs you past that center line to the hole beyond it the other way is just to look at the hub from this angle and the second key spoke simply goes on the right hand side of that imaginary line so here's another angle of the rear hub the drive side hidden behind this flange and i've removed all the other spokes just to make it a little bit simpler this is the first key spoke that we fitted the very first spoke of the whole wheel so even though this hub is at a different angle it's still the same principle we find the point where the spoke enters the hub we draw an imaginary line towards you over the flange you're about to work on you'll find it's in between two spoke holes we follow the direction the original spoke is going and that indicates which hole we're going to go in or simply just go on the right hand side of that imaginary line this is the hole that the second key spoke will go in we're going to do this heads out shoulders in to match the first key spoke once that fitted it should look a little bit like this and again it's entirely up to you if you want to fit the second key spoke to the rim now or again do what i do and add the rest of the eight spokes to this flange but it doesn't really matter if you fit this one now or have all the rest fitted which will probably be dangling down here somewhere like that we're still gonna fit this spoke first now i've got the wheel orientated the same as i started so the most important side is now back facing me and you'll see that second key spoke is to the left or the first key spoke we're just going to keep this pattern going at the rim and just go one to the left of the key spoke on the rim as well because these two spokes are on different sides of the flanges they can go next to each other on the rim what you absolutely don't want is two spokes from the same side of the flange going next to each other on the rim the spokes always alternate once you've got the second key spoke attached to the rim it's just a case of going around and attaching the rest of those spokes to get the correct positioning you can either count every four on the rim or just by putting them on the far side of the spokes are already fitted now even though i've built thousands of wheels i still tend to count because believe it or not i still can get these spokes in the wrong place but as long as the second key spoke is to the left of the first key spoke and you follow that pattern along you should be okay once again i've got the hub pictured in its final position with its full twist just like when you added the first eight spokes you may find that the spokes protrude through the rim because you haven't locked the pattern or the spokes into place yet they're still going to be very loose but after we've added the next quarter the pattern will get locked into place you'll have the twist on the hub the spokes will get tighter and they shouldn't stick out of the rim anymore and speaking of the next quarter that's what we're going to do next but fortunately because we've got both key spokes in place now things get a lot more simple because we're working in quarters we're just going to alternate so we started on this flange then we moved to this flange and now we're going to move back to the first flange except on the opposite side because the first spokes went in with the heads on the outside and shoulders inside and like i mentioned we're going to alternate the pattern the third quarter spokes will do the opposite way with the heads on the inside and the shoulders on the outside and these are a lot easier to insert from the other side of the hub and like i've mentioned quite a few times because we've got the two key spokes in position now that is the pattern set so when adding these third quarter spokes it doesn't actually matter which hole you start with there should be only eight holes left or however many for your build so go ahead just pick a hole insert your spokes and as long as you've got them going the correct way it's impossible to get this part wrong i've removed the second quarter spokes so now we can only see the spokes that are on this side flange just makes it a little bit clearer to explain that over under pattern the over under pattern is pretty much how it sounds these fourth quarter spokes go over one spoke and under another because this is two cross and we've literally only got two crosses it really is as simple as over the first spoke and under the second once you start getting more crosses you might go over the first two and under the third or over the first three and under the fourth i've added back in the second quarter spokes as this way i can show you more clearly how to thread these third quarter spokes through the other ones because we're building the wheel in quarters we now have quite a big gap here so when fitting these third quarter spokes to the rim we take the spoke and we put it through the bigger gap behind the spoke is going to go behind and then back towards you through the smaller gap and then up towards the rim so just to repeat you take the spoke up through the big gap behind the spoke on the same side flange then back towards you and up to the rim this will give you the over pattern on the first spoke and the under pattern on the second and like i've mentioned a few times the spokes always alternate so as long as you don't end up with two spokes on the same side flange next to each other on the rim you should be good to go and like i said with two cross you can always follow the pattern of going to the left of the previous spokes that you've put in it's at this point when you're adding the third quarter spokes that is vital you have the hub twisting the correct direction once you've fitted these next spokes that's it the wheel is locked in position and if you twist the hub the wrong way you won't get the logo to line up and you won't get a bigger gap up at the valve to fit a pump head so just remember always twist the hub anti-clockwise once you've fitted those spokes that's your wheel three-quarters done if your spokes were protruding from the rim you probably find they no longer are to finish off the lacing just a case of fitting the fourth quarter spokes this process is identical to the third quarter that i just showed you except we're now doing them on the last quarter of the flange so just remember that's heads on the inside and shoulders on the outside and then simply repeating the over under technique that i showed you it's going to be pretty simple to know where these last remaining spokes go because there will only be a set number of holes left on the rim and as long as you have the heads and the shoulders the right way around and you follow the correct over under technique these last quarter spokes should go in with no problems at all although saying that the spokes are no longer be baggy so if you've got the correct length spokes it may just take a slight manhandling of the rim and the spokes to get the nipples screwed on sometimes the nipple head can get caught in the rim which may make it seem like some of the spokes are too short but don't be scared to give the hub some manhandling to pull the nipples out of the rim and give you a bit more room to fit the spokes it's kind of hard to explain but should make sense once you get to this stage in the lacing and it's also at this point where a nipple driver really starts to come in useful and there you have it fingers crossed if you've been following along you now have a laced two cross wheel in front of you it shared a lot of the tricks of the one cross but because there's fewer options on how to actually put the spokes in the hub i feel two cross is a slightly simpler lacing pattern if you've been using this video to help you lace a two cross wheel let me know how it went i really hope this helped you right let's move on to the most common lacing pattern three cross so here we are three cross it's taken us over an hour of the video to get to the most common lacing pattern if you've skipped forward to this bit welcome i really hope this helps you but if you're part of the one hour club you've watched the video from the start and got to here then well done you deserve a medal if you are here from the start then i will be repeating some of the points i've already made just for the people who have skipped forward to this part so if you think i'm being repetitive that's the reason why so near the start of the video i already went over the pros and cons to three cross so let's get stuck in and actually lace this up just like with all the previous lacing patterns we're going to start with the very first spoke which is the key spoke the most important spoke of the entire wheel so let's make sure we get this in exactly the right spot now again like two cross you want to start lacing the most important side of the wheel first so for the rear wheel that would be the drive side and on the front wheel that would be the disc side although there's still a chance you're building a non-disc front hub in which case it doesn't really matter which side you start on like my previous two cross lacing tutorial i'm going to show this process on the rear hub but this three cross lacing pattern is identical no matter which wheel now the same as one cross and two cross we're using four different coloured spokes this is because we're going to build the wheel in quarters we have two flanges and each flange has two sides so we're going to start with this side move on to this side go back to this side and finish on this side it is possible to lace one flange at a time but once you start having spokes crossing each other it can be really hard to thread the spokes through the small gaps so by breaking it down into quarters we give ourselves the most space for the spokes so how do we get this key spoke in exactly the right position well if you're a member of the one hour club you'll know exactly how to do this but let's go through it again for those who have just joined in most hub manufacturers these days will have a logo somewhere on the hub ideally like instagram have nice and clear in the middle of the hub if your hub doesn't have a logo then don't worry about this first step you can literally start on any hole you like the only reason we're using the hub logo is so that it lines up with the valve hole if you check out any professionally built wheel you'll always be able to see the hub logo through the valve hole this doesn't in any way help the strength of the rim it's just a sign of a quality build if there's no logo then you can start anywhere because you don't have to worry about lining it up but anyway assuming your hub does have a logo here's what you do you want to eyeball where you think the center of the logo is and from that point draw an imaginary line through the hub towards you over the flange you're about to lace the hole closest to that center line is where you'd put radial if you jump one hole to the left that's one cross if you jump two holes to the left that's two cross jump three holes that's three cross and if you jump four holes that's four cross so in this instance we find the hole closest to that center line to the logo and then we jump three holes to the left this is the hole that your key spoke will go in the beauty of this system is no matter which lacing pattern you choose by following this technique your hub logo will always be visible through the valve hole so just to repeat the process one more time really get it drilled in we find the center of the hub logo from that we draw an imaginary line towards us over the flange we're about to lace we find a spoke hole that's closest to the center line and for three cross we jump three holes to the left and that is the position of your first key spoke and like i said if you're building a front wheel this technique is identical now if you watched my one cross tutorial you'd have seen it's quite complicated because there's quite a number of ways you could put the spokes into the flange you could have them alternating from heads in shoulders out to shoulders out heads in while you'd be pleased to know that three cross is a lot simpler because we'll now have more crossing points there are more limitations on where the spokes can go i'm going to be showing you my preferred method which is having the heads on the outside and the shoulders on the inside some people may insist that the other way is correct with the shoulders on the outside and the head on the inside something to do with the angular spokes better coping with the torque but i feel in the real world it doesn't actually make any difference i don't think there's a right or wrong way to do it this is just my preferred method but i do think the way i do it makes the lacing slightly easier and i'd take easier lacing over a theory of more torque any day of the week once your keyspoke is fitted it's up to you if you want to fit that individually to the rim now or do what i do for a bit of time saving and fit the rest of the eight spokes now and again the same with one and two cross i'm mentioning eight spokes because that is one quarter of my wheel which is a 32 hole if your wheel has a different number of spokes then this number will be different but no matter what number it is it's always every second hole on the flange because we're only doing one side of the flange at a time we'll fit the remaining spokes later on the plan is to have the spokes alternating from one side of the flange to the other so no matter if you're fitting this spoke solo or if you have all the other spokes dangling down like i would we now need to fit this spoke to the correct place on the rim and once again all the folk in the one hour club will know exactly where this boat goes and that's the hole to the left of the valve hole because we went to the left of where the logo is on the hub the valve will now line up perfectly it's such a brilliant system no matter where your key spoke goes it always goes to one spoke left of the valve this means no matter what your lacing pattern the valve always lines up with the hub logo so just to make this absolutely double clear we found the hub logo we drew an imaginary line over the flange towards us the one we're gonna build we found the spoke hole closest to that line and then for three cross we jump three spokes to the left the spoke goes heads out shoulders in goes up to the rim and goes one hole left of the valve now i mentioned this later on as well but you may notice my hub is twisted in its final rotation you probably find at this point the hub just wants to naturally sit straight so the spoke will look more like a radial but don't worry about that as long as you've got the key spoke in the right position it doesn't matter if the hub flops about a bit however at this point before you fit the rest of this quarter of the spokes to the rim it's vital you don't let the hub twist around on its axis if this is the rear hub where we started on the drive side we always want the drive side pointing towards us at this point and if this is the front hub you want it to be the disc mount it can be so easy at this point to either let go of the hub and the rim maybe you put the wheel down for something or you just let your concentration slip if you allow the hub to spin around on its axis you're going to lose all the advantages of finding this key spoke position you'll no longer be able to see the hub logo through the valve hole and more importantly as i'll explain later you'll have less room to fit a pump to the valve when i was younger and building my very first wheels this was a mistake that caught me out more than once so learn from my mistakes and don't let that hub spin around on its axis now that you've made sure the hub is the correct way around we can go around and fit the rest of this quarter because we offset the spokes on the hub and when every two we now offset the spokes on the rim and go every four so that's one two three four spoken one two three four spoken and just repeat that until you've completed all the spokes again like i mentioned my hub is rotated in this drawing but more than likely your hope won't be and because of this it means your spokes will be a lot baggier in a wheel and it's more than likely some spokes would be protruding out of the rim this is more common on a shallower rim but may even still happen on quite a deep one like this light bicycle one and you may find some stick out more than others probably on one half of the wheel this is just because the hub won't be sat central to the wheel at this point so what i'm saying is don't worry if your spokes are sticking out and don't worry if they're sticking out more on one side than the other this will likely be the case until we fit the third quarter of spokes it's at that point that we set the rotation of the hub which will pull all the spokes back into the rim so hopefully this is all making sense we found the location of the key spoke on the hub and the rim and then we counted every four holes on the rim to find the location for the rest of the spokes for this quarter ideally that's gone well for you and that is the first quarter done the wheel is now one quarter laced so next up is to find the second key spoke which is this one here this is the first spoke on the second flange and is the second most important spoke you need to get right once you've got these two spokes in exactly the right place the rest of the wheel should just fall into place now just how we had a really simple trick to find the first key spoke position there's another simple trick to find the second one and i'll take you through that right now to put the second key spoke in i flips the wheel around so i'm now looking at the opposite flange and i'm actually going to give you a two for one deal here not only do i have one tip but earlier in this video i alluded to a little trick how you can have different spoke lacing patterns on either side of the wheel and i'm going to show you how you do that but once again if you're a member of the one hour club you'll recognize this picture we've used it multiple times before but that's the beauty of this system it works no matter what your spoke lacing pattern so i've drawn the hub here fully twisted in its final position it's up to you if you want to do that and match this but it's not necessary the same tricks will still apply and here's how we do them step number one we locate the position of the very first key spoke this will be on the flange pointing away from you now we follow that down to the hub and take note of where it enters the flange and much like earlier where we found a hub logo and drew an invisible line over the hub towards the flange we're going to work on we're now going to do the same thing except drawing that line from where the first key spoke enters the hub so that's an imaginary line from the first key spoke position over the hub to the flange you're about to lace as i've mentioned with the previous patterns spoke flanges are slightly offset so your imaginary line might end up in between two spoke holes this is totally fine but which spoke hold do you choose now there's two ways to do this the first if your hub is twisted like this is you can just follow the first key spoke to the hub you just follow the direction of that spoke and that will indicate which side of the imaginary line you need to go or to put it simply if your spokes aren't twisted you can just go to the right hand side of that imagine your line this hole will be your position for your second key spoke that's assuming you want three cross on both sides i'm now going to share with you the tip that allows you to have a different spoke lacing pattern on this side of the hub so by using the previous technique we've discovered that this is the position for the key spoke if we were going to go three cross now much with the original key spoke where we jumped spoke holes until we got to the cross number that we wanted we're going to do exactly the same with the second key spoke position so we've determined that this hole is where the spoke goes for a three cross if you wanted this side to be two cross you just jump one hole back to the left if you wanted one cross it's two holes and if you wanted radial it's three holes so essentially we're undoing the three cross pattern and this technique works the other way as well if you want to do four cross on this side of the flange for whatever reason you just count one hole to the right so just to recap this quickly get it drilled in we find the first key spoke the very first spoke we fitted follow it up to the hub take note of where it joins the flange draw an imaginary line across the hub to the flange we're about to lace and if we're going three cross it's one hole to the right of this imaginary line if we're going two cross we jump one hole back to the left if we're going one cross we jump two holes to the left and if we're going radial we jump three holes back to the left or we can do this opposite way for four cross we jump one hole extra to the right i hope that makes sense because i really do like this technique and i really want it to work for you guys as well now for the purposes of three cross i'm going to put my second key spoke through this hole here and that's matching the pattern we did with the first quarter with the heads on the outside and shoulders on the inside and once that's in position it'll look a little something like that i've got a second angle of the rear hub here with the drive side hidden behind this flange and i've removed the spokes for easier viewing i'm just going to quickly run through one more time exactly how to get both key spokes in exactly the right place that first initial key spoke was fitted because we jumped three holes away from that first hole closest to the center line from that key spoke position we draw another imaginary line across the hub to the other flange we're about to work on and from there we can either continue the angle the spoke is going to decide the direction to go to find our second key spoke position or just go to the right hand side of that imaginary line that is your position for three cross four across would be one extra hole further along two cross would be back one hole one cross would be back another hole and radial would be back once more we then fit that second key spoke through this hole for three cross matching the first spokes with the heads on the outside and shoulders on the inside and once again it's up to you if you want to fit the second key spoke to the rim right now or follow my slight time saving technique and fit all eight spokes now no matter if you choose to do this solo now or have all the other spokes dangling down we still need to get the second key spoke in the right place on the rim so with the wheel flipped back around so the drive side is facing you or the disc side if it's front where the first key spoke went to the left of the valve hole the second key spoke will now be left of the first key spoke and that simply goes into the next hole to the left of the key spoke on the rim then it's simply a case of following this pattern of going to the left or the first quarter spokes for the rest of the second quarter and of course the other way you can do is to count every four spoke holes from that second key spoke position now like i mentioned earlier my hub is pictured here fully rotated and just like before yours is unlikely to be like this just now so once again don't worry if your spokes are sticking out of the rim we're now going to fit the third quarter of spokes this will set the cross pattern and this is where we'll initiate the twist of the hub now the good news is now that we've got both key spokes in the rest of the spokes are just a walk in the park there's no longer any super specific place they need to go so let's take you through the third quarter so just like i mentioned these third quarter spokes don't have any specific hole they need to go in first now that was switched back to our original flange which on the rear is the drive side and disc on the front you can literally pick any hole you want for your first spoke the only important thing is that you want these spokes to alternate with the spokes that are already in there so if you remember we have heads on the outside and shoulders on the inside this third quarter of spokes are fitted from the other side of the hub and will end up with the shoulders on the outside and the heads on the inside i normally flip the wheel around so the drive side or the front disc side is facing away from me as i find it a lot easier to thread the spokes in from this direction if we go back to the side profile of the wheel and remove the second quarter spokes it gives a slightly clearer idea of how we're going to lace these third quarter this is where it's vital that you twist the hub in the correct direction which is anti-clockwise twist it the wrong way and your logo won't line up anywhere near the valve not only that but you'll give yourself a smaller gap making it harder to fit a pump head onto the valve as you can see these gaps are all different sizes and if you twist the herb the wrong way you actually end up with the valve at the smallest gap possible and trust me i'm not making it up this does actually make it harder to pump up your tire so just remember to make sure you twist your hub anti-clockwise once you've done that these third quarter spokes will actually go in the opposite direction to your first spokes and this is where we're going to set the over under pattern because we're crossing at three points we're actually going to go over the first two crossings and then we're gonna go under the third so that's over right down on the flange over on the second crossing and then under on the third i've now added back in the spokes that we've put in so far and as you can see there's a little bit of weaving you need to do to get these new spokes in but because we built our wheel in quarters we now have a nice big gap here which helps make weaving these spokes through easier because the first crossing is so close to the flange the actual act of weaving these spokes through isn't much different than two cross and we did that by taking a spoke up through the biggest gap behind the other spoke and then back towards you threading it in between and up towards the rim this will give you your over over under pattern when fitting the spokes to the rim there's a couple of options on how you make sure you get the correct hole one option is to find a spoke from the same side flange and just count two spoke holes away from that or the other option because we'll be going left of the valve and then the second key spoke went left to that you can simply go to the left of that one again just getting one spoke in will now lock the hub in its rotation and then it's just a case of repeating the process with the rest of this quarter after you've added the twist and the rest of the spokes you'll notice that any protruding spokes have now been pulled into the rim done right your wheel should look something like this and the good news all you need to do now is fit the last quarter which is exactly the same process we just did just be sure to have the spokes alternating on the hub and have the heads and shoulders the correct way around get your three crossing points and then attach to the rim now knowing where these spokes go in the room is going to be super easy because these are the last spokes there's only a set number of holes they can actually go in now even if you've got exactly the right length spokes you may find it actually come up a little bit short this might be because some of the nipples have got caught and snagged inside the rim so to loosen it up don't be scared of giving the hub a good shake and man handle once everything pops into place you'll find you have plenty of room to fit these last spokes although you may still need to use a nipple driver especially if it's a deep section rim light this light bicycle one so if it's all gone well you should have a wheel looking like this your hub logo should line up with the valve you should have the biggest gap possible here for a pump head you should have three spoke crossing points with an over over under pattern if not don't worry go back a few steps and hopefully you'll see where you went wrong but hopefully i explained this well enough and now you have a fully laced wheel if you've used this tutorial to help you lace a three cross wheel i'd love to know how it went for you please hit me up in the comments and let me know so now there is only one lacing pattern left but rather than show you with a drawing i figured because i'm actually using this pattern myself we should put all this theory into practice so let's go back to my garage and i'm gonna run through a four cross build as quick as i can because most of the tips are exactly the same as three cross but it might help you guys to visualize a real wheel while it's being done now that we've done the theory let's put it into practice i'm going to lace my rear hub here i'm choosing the rear one because it's a dishless hub meaning the spokes are the same length on both sides so what i normally do is pick up what i think is eight spokes because we're going to put in the first eight spokes on the drive sides which like i've said is the more important side to start with if this was the front hub i'd be starting on the disc side now obviously the camera is pointing me so i'm going to be using left and right as if i'm looking at the hub so like i said starting on the modern point side i find the logo on the hub and then i find the corresponding hole which lines up most closely to the center of the logo just to repeat it doesn't matter if it's not exactly in the center you just want to find the one which is closest so because this is four cross i'm going to count one two three four to my left and that is where the key spoke goes once i've got the key spoke in i tend to just keep a finger on it all times just so i don't lose it it is up to you if you want to attach this to the rim now personally i don't i put the rest of the eight spokes in so that's a spoke every second hole heads out the shoulders in like the key spoke so once all eight spokes are in i've still got hold of the first key spoke here makes it just easier to find and then grab the rim i find the valve hole which is exactly where this logo is and then because the hub is going to be twisting to the left i go one hole to the left as i'm looking at it on the rim and then lock that spoke in place with a nipple so that's the first key spoke in place now at this point the hub can actually rotate on that spoke so it's important to keep that hub facing the same way remember it's the drive side on the rear hub and the disc on the front hub that wants to be facing towards you at this point when you're absolutely sure that the hub is the correct way and hasn't turned you can add the rescue spokes now this is every fourth spoke on the rim now i've been doing this for years and i can still get this wrong so i still just count four so one two three four and it goes in this one here it can be quite easy to scratch the rim with the spoke so yeah be careful when you're putting the spoke into the rim now the hub with two spokes in can still twist but it's a lot more obvious because the spokes will cross but now that you've got at least two spokes in it's unlikely the hope will spin then it's simply a case of adding the spokes to every fourth hole until you've got the first eight spokes in so that's the first side done i now grab another eight spokes and we're gonna fit the opposite side there are two key spokes in a wheel build the first spoke we put in and the first spoke we're going to put in on this side these are the two most important spokes so it's really important to get this right so we find the first key spoke which is the first spoke we put in we follow that up to the hub we look through the hub at the opposite flange and try and find where that corresponds to this opposite flange again this may be between spoke holes so we follow the spoke along and we go to the next spoke after where the key spoke is now i've actually got hold of the key spoke with my hand on the underside here so i'm going to keep hold of that and while i do i'm going to add the rest of the spokes and again like before this is every second spoke with the heads on the outside shoulders on the inside to match that first one once you've got hold of your second key spoke find your first key spoke which is easy to find because that's the one up by the valve and it goes into the spoke hole next to that and that's your two key spokes locked in place once you've got your second key spoke in much like the first slot spokes it's then a case of fitting the rest of the eight and again much like the first lot of eight spokes is every four holes on the rim so one two three four so there we have it that is the first 16 spokes that's eight spokes per flange and the two most important spokes the two key spokes are fitted so the pattern is locked in place from this point onwards now the key night amongst you may have noticed what direction my hub has spun it's actually spun the wrong way so again it's really important to make sure it's turning the correct direction it may take a little bit of manhandling to do it once the spokes are in but make sure it is turning the correct way so that is first 16 spokes on either side of the flange i'm gonna now put in the next eight spokes and this is going back to the drive side the side i started with except instead of facing this towards me i'm going to keep this facing away from me because rather than having the heads on the outsides and shoulders on the inside we're going to flip that we're going to do the opposite i'm going to have heads on the inside shoulders on the outside so by having the wheel facing away from me i can just insert the spokes from the other side now the great thing now is because we've already set the two key spokes it absolutely doesn't matter which spokes go in first this time you can put them in any way you want you can skip one put one down there you can put one over here it really doesn't matter what order you put those in i find this next process easiest with the wheel vertically with the drive side on my right hand side personal preference if you want to do the wheel flat it's completely up to you but no matter which way you do it this is where it is absolutely vital to make sure you have the correct direction twist on the hub because as soon as you fit your first spoke is going to lock that twist in place so double triple check your hub is spinning the correct way and then we can get on to fitting the next eight spokes to the rim much like when we lace the wheel it doesn't matter which spoke you start with you can choose any one you like and this is why i did the hub flanges alternately because there's a big gap on that side because i haven't fitted all the spokes i have a lot more room to wiggle this spoke underneath the other one and again just to repeat myself to get this absolutely dialed in for you guys this is a four cross wheel which is a bit unusual so i'm going over the first three one two three and then it's going under the fourth one if this was a three cross wheel build i'll go over the first two and under the third but like i said this is four cross so over the first three under the fourth and then we go to the alternating hole on the rim it's really important that you don't have two spokes from the same flange going to a hole next to each other so you may find at this point it's going to be difficult to get the nipple through the rim without it falling in especially on a deep profile rim like this some shallower rims may have the spoke push through far enough that you can just add the nipple by hand so i'm going to get a spare spoke thread the nipple on backwards just a turn or two then i can put that through the rim get the spoke and then screw it on by hand screw that on a couple times remove this spoke just by turning the opposite way this is when i get my nipple driver stick it through on a deep profile room like this it might be hard to find it but once you do let's give that a few turns you don't want the thread to be completely gone just thread it on a couple of turns maybe two three four turns just to have it securely locked in place and it's not going to rattle off while you're building the wheel now that that spoke is fitted that is the directional twist of the hub absolutely fixed in place now now it's simply a case of repeating the process and adding the rest of the spokes to the rim you don't have to go in order but i do recommend going in order starting from the first spoke you put in and just making way around it just stops any confusion to where they need to be because you can just count four spokes from that first one one two three four and that will go in that hole there so simply repeat this process until all these eight spokes are fitted easy peasy looking pretty good and the good news is you've only got eight more spokes to put in i mean if it is a 32-hole wheel and you're on the home straight now these are the easiest ones to put in there's only eight holes left in the hub only eight holes left in the rim so it's exactly the same as what we've just done you put the spokes in from the opposite side like before heads on the inside shoulders on the outside alternating on the flange doesn't matter where you put them simply find a space and fit a spoke it's easiest to find the straightest route possible you may have to wiggle a spoke to get it through but it should simply just pop through just like that and if you're matching cross patterns on both sides which we have done on this style of wheel just repeat the cross method you did on the other side so exactly like last time over the first three and then under the fourth so just repeat that process for the remaining spokes and you should have a laced wheel and there we go that is a fully laced wheel now because i got the twist the correct way i have a bigger gap up at the valve this gives you absolutely bags of space for a pump head to fit onto the valve if you twist the hub the wrong way you end up with a gap this size and it just makes life a lot harder to get the pump head on but most importantly you get to see the hub logo through the valve hole so there we go fingers crossed if you followed this video you now have a perfectly laced wheel the next step is to add tension get it trued get it stressed and get it finished but i'm gonna save that for another video this has actually been one of the more difficult videos that i've done for a while i've built thousands of wheels and i've known this technique for over a decade now so it's kind of second nature but to try and explain it to people in a way that is understandable it's not that easy i really hope you were able to follow along and what i was saying made sense i hope my drawings made sense i encourage you to let me know down in the comments if this video did help you if you have a laced wheel or a fully finished wheel because this video please tag me on social media ally clarkson on instagram and facebook i'd love to take a look i personally can't wait to finish building this wheel i've actually had these hubs for months now sorry industry nine i should have built them sooner but i actually had to wait a long time for these rims to come because of the whole you know pandemic making manufacturing slower than usual but yeah i've been loving the kris king hubs but having over 600 engagement points this is going to be fun so finishing this wheel is going to be a future video so until then please go subscribe if you haven't already please hit me up on patreon if you want longer videos released earlier what else is there i have merch ali clarkson.com is going to be some changes there i want to add some more designs that i've designed personally what else hit the notification button on youtube drop a comment thumbs up all that stuff let me know about your builds and i'll catch you next time so take care everyone have a great week see you later bye

Channel: Ali Clarkson

Views: 5,211

Rating: 4.9861832 out of 5

Keywords: ali clarkson, ali c, ali clarkson street trials, ali clarkson bike, ali clarkson vlog, ali clarkson inspired, ali clarkson bike build, ali clarkson wheel build, ali clarkson trackstand, ali clarkson bunnyhop, bike trials, best trials bike, gopro hero 9, biking, bike vlog, mtb, bike crash, inspired hex, inspired fourplay, downhill bike, enduro bike, red bull bike, wheel, wheel lacing 101, wheel lacing, spoke fitting, how to lace a wheel, 3x wheel lacing

Id: EEv9IqMvUnQ

Length: 91min 32sec (5492 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 01 2021