[CR]Wheel building puzzle

(Example: Production Builders:Cinelli)

From: <RDF1249@aol.com>
Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2007 22:12:36 EST
To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
Subject: [CR]Wheel building puzzle

I have several NOS Lobdell wooden rims, all 32 hole, found in the attic of a 100+ yr old Cincinatti bike store. Since finding vintage hubs in 32/32 sets is somewhat rare, I plan to build a pair of them up with a typical older british hubset in 32/40, skipping every 5th spoke on each side of the rear hub. How to figure the spoke lengths, that is the puzzle. I deduced there are four different lengths required, for each of the four positions in one section. I suppose one could draw this in 3D CAD and just have the program figure out the spoke lengths, but I wonder if one of you math whizzes can come up with an algorithm that works, or maybe just a simple common sense solution. Scratch your heads a bit on this. Replies off-list as well as on please, lest I miss a post.

cheers
Bob Freeman
Seattle