spoke wrench

In this tutorial we show you how to lace the drive side spokes of a rear bicycle wheel. It's important to remember that on the rear wheel the drive side spokes are slightly shorter than the non-drive side, due to the dish of the wheel. You should also prep your spokes with linseed oil or spoke prep before lacing.

At this point we have assembled everything need to start lacing the spokes onto the rear wheel.  Our drive-side and non-drive side have been prepped in two different colors to help us note that they are different lengths.

The first step is to lace through the drive side of the hub, doing "outies" every other hole.  "Outies" means pushing the spokes through the hub towards the outer edge of the hub flange. 

Mike finishes up lacing the 32 spoke rear wheel by lacing the non-drive side spokes. Note the parallel spokes that connect on each side of the valve hole. By now you might need to use a spoke wrench, screwdriver or nipple driver to help get the nipples on the spokes.

At this point, there is spoke in every other hole in the rim. All the exposed holes should be facing the non-drive side of the rim. When lacing the non-drive side, start with the "Innies" or spokes laced toward the inside of the hub. These spokes will be laced into the larger gap created by the laced spokes.The gap acts as self fulfilling prophecy, only allowing spokes that are inserted into the correct holes to make it into the large gap.  Placing the spokes in the large gap allows you to actually move the spoke and guide it to the correct hole on the rim.

Putting the finishing touches on the wheel.
First:Now the spokes are beginning to tighten up nicely and the kinks in the wheel are becoming gradually smaller. Continue to incrementally tighten the spokes. Once things start to get really close use only quarter turns on each spoke. If you don't have a spoke tension meter then pluck the spokes like a guitar string and listen to the tone of the spokes. They should be relatively similar.

The spoke wrench is a very essential tool to the cyclist who knows how to replace their own broken spokes, perform a basic wheel true, or build their own wheels. If you don’t know how to do these things and then you haven’t watched enough of our videos. It is a very simple tool consisting of a handle of some type and a with a small open ended gap at the base. Many spoke tools are color coded according to size for different nipples and others are all-in-one tools. Often circular or triangular tools with many different size gaps lining the edges to fit the majority of nipple sizes.

In this series we give you the basics of building a 36 spoke wheel. We begin with lacing the wheel, then show you the process of truing the wheel. So get everything together and make some time learn how to build a wheel, a very rewarding experience.  Check out this video on calculating spoke length if you need spokes!  We used the UBI Spoke Calculator.