- Joined
- Sep 17, 2013
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- 4,290
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I have a habit of keeping all the spokes and nipples from the old bikes and wheels people give me. I keep them in a box, but they are not very well organized. Schwinn 26 inch , 26 x 1 3/8 inch, old 26 inch, new 26 inch, 24 inch , 27 inch and extra custom cut spokes seem to become commingled into an merged mess. Recently I built a 26 inch double drop centered front wheel using a NOS New Departure hub. I used old 1930s doubled butted spokes and long nipples (I think the nipples are 19 mm vs the longest available 16 mm modern spokes but not sure). The problem was that the front rim was tacoed beyond Pringle Potato Chips; it was more like a Mobius strip. The rim matched, even in color, the rear New Departure rear rim so I really wanted to try and straighten out the rim, no matter what. I realized that spoke tension would deviate all over the latitude. It turned out nice and true but some spokes fit nicely, others stick out several mm and will have to be ground off. One spoke was very loose so I replaced it with a 12 mm nipple, which solved the tension problem. What I found was that not all of my 12 mm spoke nipples fit, they would not thread on. I also tried some old long Schwinn nipples and they did't fit any of the old spokes on the wheel I was building. Dah! I finally found a 12 mm nipple that would thread on. My question is "do different old spokes have a different TPI?" Are all old my Schwinn and other nipples crusted so bad they won't fit on anything other than what they came from? I am not talking about something that is stiff going on; it you try and tighten the spoke, it brakes. I think there is more than one spoke TPI? Anybody out there know the answer to this? I hope it is not a cosmic conundrum, like why a one liter bottle of Coke used to cost more than a 2 liter bottle?
