Need a little advice. Building my first unicycle and am going to try my hand at building the wheel. Seems I need 257mm spokes but only seem to be able to find 256mm or 258mm. does it matter/What would you use?
Thanks
Jack
Between them i would go with 256. That’s assuming the 257 number is correct. Usually you can go a mm in either direction without too much trouble. If your ideal length is even a small fraction more than 257 go with the 258’s
if your worried about being a few mm short you can take up the difference with longer Brass Nipples. Usually you can get 3 lenghts
Just adds a bit of security knowing your using most or all the spoke thread holding them all nice and firm. Have fun building your Wheel!!!
Really, you don’t want to use long nipples to make up for short spokes. If you are buying them for the wheel there is no reason not to get the right length, and the correct nipples. Long nipples are generally made to give better access to the flats for deep rims, or rims that would otherwise make nipple access difficult. If you look at them you can see that they get longer in the flats than they do in the threaded portion.
The problem is that if the spoke end doesn’t make it past the shoulder on the nipple head you have a very weak bit of brass holding all of your tension. The nipple will break. In fact, as far as I know this is the only reason nipples break.
In an ideal world you want the spoke to stop somewhere between the screwdriver slot and the top of the nip. That distance is about a millimeter. if you go a mm shorter it gets you just above the shoulder of the head, and better to be a little higher. So, if your spoke length is based on the bottom of the driver slot, it gives you about a mm up or down. Like I said before if you are even a fraction above your ideal length round up, not down. As you can see in the diagram you really don’t have an honest mm down.
Thank You
Thanks everyone.
Jack