At Interbike this year, Erica in the Sapim booth had a new spoke to show off to the wheel builders. The Strong is a a 2.3 / 2.0 stainless steel spoke that is butted around the "J" bend of the spoke. ("Butting" means it is thicker in certain places.) The Strong spoke primarily intended for people who thrash their wheelsets on downhill, trekking, crazy city riding antics, and mountain biking escapades.
Sapim is a Belgian-based company. Many pro teams ride on their spokes. They have a number of different types of spokes, and you basically look at the weight of the spoke and the fatigue rate of the spoke when deciding which spoke to use in a wheelset dedicated to a certain riding application.
We do a ton of wheel builds with the Sapim Race spokes that we cut and roll with a Phil Wood spoke cutting machine. The Phil Wood spoke cutting machine cold rolls the threads. This means it doesn't cut into the spoke. No shaving come out of the machine. Instead the machine compresses and redistributes the metal. Like if you are rolling our a pie crust. But the pie crust is really a spoke thread.
Sapim makes these special blank spokes especially for the Phil Wood spoke machine. I am looking forward to building a set of bomb-proof wheels with the new Sapim Strong spokes. (More about why the Sapim Phil Wood spokes are special after the jump.)
Diagrams lifted from the Sapim site.
The Sapim Phil Wood Race spokes are 2.0/1.8/2.0 (14/15/14) double-butted stainless steel in silver and black. But the butting is on the "J," and after the thinner middle part of the spoke, the butting extend 50mm on the threaded part of the spoke. So, even when you cut the spokes, you never cut off enough butting to weaken the spoke.
So, we cut and thread the special 310mm long spokes down to 271mm without cutting away the butting. And for wheels that require a spoke shorter than 271mm, we have Phil Wood Sapim spokes 270 mm in length that we cut and roll down to 240 mm without cutting away the butting. I also like the Sapim Polyax nipples. The threads are tapered; they are longer, and they help builds go well.
