Spent most of the afternoon tensionsing and truing a 36H 1X Hi-E front wheel, with Hi-E hub, rim, spokes and nipples. The wheel is old and many spokes rusted. A couple of nipples were frozen and I had to cut the spokes out and steal spokes from another Hi-E wheel, as the Hi-E are 15 ga at the nipple and I don't have a stock of 15 ga spokes.
As with all old wheels, I completely detensioned, then gradually retensioned as I alternated adjusting round and true. Finally got the wheel tensioned to about 85 kg average, except one spoke was much lower by the tension meter, maybe 50 kg. Tried tightening this one loose spoke and - BOOM!!. The spoke snapped. Now I've had this happen before when nearing final tension, especially on old wheels. Usually it puts a hop in the wheel that has to be worked out. But this incident totally destroyed the rim at the broken spoke locaton. The rim has a deep crease as if hit with an axe, totally destroyed.
I've heard these Hi-E rims described as "scary light" before, and now I understand. It is not only an adventure to ride them, but even to tension them. I do have another Hi-E 36 hole rim, so now I'll do what I should have done in the first place - buy some 15 ga spokes of the appropriate length and rebuild the wheel, athough I may save and use the Hi-E nipples. Moral of the story is, when working with super light rims, it's probably best to just rebuilt the wheel with new spokes rather than try to retension old rusty spokes.
Regards,
Jerry Moos
Big Spring, Texas, USA