Why is this practice frowned upon?
At least in a shop setting, this practice is frowned upon because it takes more time. It's hard enough to get people to pay a fair price for wheel builds, and I suspect that the whole "never reuse spokes" thing was started by shops that had no interest in trying to pry another ten bucks out of a customer for the time required to unthread all the spokes. Even if this time is paid for, once it is done there are still so many problems. If the spokes are old an fatigued and one breaks in the first 1,000 miles it will be "the shop's fault." If the spokes are the wrong length for the new rim you need to call the customer with disappointing news. Or, maybe they were the wrong length to begin with, but the kid doing the service writing is clueless about the whole matter.
As for doing this at home, it's no big problem. Spokes do fatigue with use, so I wouldn't bother reusing spokes from a well-used wheel, but if it's a new wheel and the rim went to an early grave, go ahead and resuse the spokes. In fact, proper disassembly of a wheel requires letting out the tension evenly, maybe a half turn at a time, all the way around. Only at that point should you cut away the old spokes, and by then it's not much harder to completely unscrew the nipples (particularly if you use an electric drill). Unfortunatley, many (most?) shop mechanics take the quick route by cutting down fully tensioned wheels. This really puts a lot of stress on the hub flange, and the rim too. If either part is to be reused, and presumably one is or you'd just toss the whole wheel, you should not cut the fully-tesnioned spokes.
Tom Dalton Bethlehem, PA USA
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