Garth,
I'm not above a little trial and error myself when I build up wheels, but it sounds like your initial attempt may have been going two spokeholes too far. Also, I find that there is sometimes a bit of doubt about the wheel is going to truly come together properly until you have all the spokes laced and begin to apply some tension to them.
Good luck with the build,
John Barry
Mechanicsburg, PA, USA
> I was given a very standard looking older low flange
> Suntour Hub and a
> set of 32 new d-butted 297 mm spokes. The spokes off
> the old wheel
> measured 297 also and the hub and rim were also
> unchanged from the
> 80's. When I tried to lace the new spokes, I
> couldn't get them to reach
> when I attempted a three cross. I eventually was
> forced to lace them 2
> cross for which the spokes poked out from the inside
> of the nipple
> about three threads. Now assuming the original wheel
> was laced using
> one of those machines that became popular around
> that time, could that
> have enabled the manufacture to have used shorter
> spokes than a home
> mechanic could? Was it standard practice to use the
> shortest spokes
> possible or to have used longer ones and then ground
> off the excess? I
> am no wheel building expert, but I laced the first
> sixteen spokes using
> the minimum of threading to assist in using the
> shortish spokes. The
> 297's seemed to come about a quarter of an inch
> short of meeting the
> nipple in 3 cross.
>
> Garth libre in Miami Fl USA
>
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