Unless something getting jammed into it a wheel should not break spokes. It’s the wheelbuilder’s job, that’s us, to use the right components, the right build processes and the right tools to ensure that your new wheels arrive perfectly straight and perfectly tensioned, but importantly that they stay that way without breaking spokes, for their life.

This video takes a look at the main reasons that spokes and nipples break and what we do to pre-empt and mitigate them.

Over the past 16 years of running Wheelworks I’ve seen a lot of broken spokes which has given me a chance to analyse and understand these problems. From day-1 I’ve wanted to build durable, reliable wheels so understanding unexplained failures is critical. It’s incredibly rare that our wheels break spokes but it does happen and we continue to incorporate what we learn into the finer points of our components and processes.


0:00 Introduction
0:47 Breaking at the Head
2:32 Mitigate Head Breakage
3:40 Breaking at the Nipple
4:06 Mitigate Break at Nipple
5:44 Nipples Breaking
6:41 Mitigate Broken Nipple
7:34 Breaking Along the Length
9:24 Question 1
10:09 Question 2
10:27 Question 3
10:58 Question 4