You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
so, I've built a bunch of wheels up over my time. I think every rim I've used has featured offset spoke holes - that is to say, every other hole is shifted to one side or the other of the centre line of the rim. I lace the holes to the right of the rim to the right hand flange of the hub - so far, so normal (I believe..)
why is this? surely you'd get better stiffness by lacing across to oposing holes, as the spoke would be more diagonal (the same reason boost hubs are good) - in fact with modern, wider rims, if you ran a squarer profile rim (like the shame from old v brake days) you could offset the holes significantly (+20mm either side) giving the equivalent of a 40mm wider hub but without the disadvantages. Am I missing something
I think every rim I’ve used has featured offset spoke holes
Are you sure?
not as in, all offset to one side, as in, each one is set to one side or the other. Maybe that's not called offset, but whatever it's called, that 🙂
You can do exactly what you're suggesting. It works 😉 I built up some Surly Rabbit Hole 50mm rims (which are drilled with two rows of holes about 35mm apart) with the spokes laced to the opposite holes. Still going strong after nearly 5 years.
Often the offset spoke holes are angle drilled so the nipple pulls straight.
I was going to say I think it’s to do with the angle the spoke comes out of the rim.
As bigyan, the holes in the vast majority of rooms aren't really offset, they're just drilled at an angle - so they're angled towards the relevant hub flange. It allows the mushroom head of the niople to be fully supported.
Going to the opposite flange to that intended by the hole angle is just going to bend the spoke and not seat the nipple properly when you get some tension in there.
agreed the spoke hole is angled (although on my rims they're definitely offset as well - see image below that they are still offset on the tyre side of the rim as well) - but why not make them angled the other way (from further over) so you can get more offset? wouldn't work on a skinny road rim but on something wide it'd work well
[img] 
[/img]
Looks to me like those are drilled towards the hub from a common centre line. It's only by virtue of that angle that they appear offset on the outside of the rim.
Lasst front wheel I built I wasn't paying enough attention and had spokes going to wrong offset hole. Rode it for a coupe of months with no issues although the nipple never looked seated quite right. Rebuilt last weekend as it was raining all day to put it right.
Cross-spoking: if the spoke holes aren't angled there's no reason not to do it.
I do it with my fatbike rims when the wheel is offset (like a Pugsley). It means you get a better balance between tensions on the offset wheels. If you spoke those normally then one set of spokes is almost vertical and the other at quite an angle, so the tensions are very different.
Here's an example of an offset wheel (ignore the extra spoke holes, I redrilled it to 32 holes from 36)
[url= https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1360/5178781694_5f4b26756e_o.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1360/5178781694_5f4b26756e_o.jp g"/> [/img][/url]
And here's a symmetrical wheel built cross-spoke (before tensioning), even at that stage the wheel was very stiff.
[url= https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4149/4949570786_d4edb1aa00_o.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4149/4949570786_d4edb1aa00_o.jp g"/> [/img][/url](SX-RK3 hub with 100mm rim, 2 cross spoking and crossover - before final tension)
However I don't think I'd bother trying this with a narrow rim.
ok, here's another picture. a given hole is DEFINITELY over to one side of the rim, the whole way through the rim. It looks like the point at which they'd cross would be somewhere close to the virtual line at the top of the rim
