The definitive guide to lacing a Rohloff hub in 2025! (No, really).

The Internet is a wonderful place. Well, it is when you can find what you’re looking for. But, it can be a scary place full of demons and confusion. Like when you’re looking for a simple guide on how to lace a Rohloff hub when you’re building a wheel!

The other important thing I’ve learned is – don’t forget to read something all the way to the end. Apart from here: you can just read the next bit if you want to. Probably.

TLDR:

• Go for a 2 cross spoke pattern; the size of the hub dictates this, a 3 cross pattern would mean the spoke entering the rim at too sharp an angle, at least on a 29″ wheel. You might need to go 1 cross on a smaller rim, your friendly spoke calculator should help.
• Use Sapim Race, or DT Swiss Competition spokes; these have the correct diameter heads and being top quality, they shouldn’t have any rough edges that might dig into the hub flanges.
• Lace your inbound and outbound spokes as normal, but…
• Lace them so you’re not crossing spokes directly over the hubcap screws on the non drive side.
• You can use either the symmetric (rim brake) or asymmetric (disc brake) spoke pattern.

That’s it – you can go and build your wheel now 😉

Wait, you want more?

Would you like to know how many rabbit holes I disappeared down to work that out? Well, go on then, but don’t say I didn’t warn you:

(And yes, I know this picture is wrong! The inbound and outbound spokes are the opposite way round to a normal build; I thought that was correct, because I didn’t spend enough time reading something all the way through.)

In the beginning:

I knew that Rohloff want their hubs laced in a particular way, because, well, everyone says they do.

Why? Well it’s to do with the size of the hub flanges, and because there had previously been some issues with the hub flanges cracking under heavy use. Rohloff will even sell you a retaining ring to fit around the flange to stop it flying apart should it break!

To help with the issue of the hub flanges cracking, they had previously advised that leading, or ‘pulling spokes’ should be laced inbound so they’re not wrapped over the edge of the hub flange. The theory here is that it will put less stress on the flange and solve the issue of them cracking.

Not a problem, I thought, Rohloff being a techy German company should have all the info on their website. Which is where it all starts to go pear shaped!

Let the confusion begin!

Rohloff’s guide on how to lace a wheel

Firstly, they introduce the concept of the European vs. French nipple hole patterns, something I’d never heard of before! Turns out that all the rims I’ve ever seen are ‘French’, ie. when you’re lacing the wheel from the drive side, the key inbound spoke goes from the left hand side of the hub into the hole to the left of the valve (at least the way I lace wheels it does!).

With that out of the way, let’s take a squiz at their helpful diagrams. I say helpful. They would be helpful if their definition of ‘leading’ and ‘trailing’ spokes isn’t the opposite of everyone else’s! Also, according to the pictures, the wheel is just being laced in a conventional way – so why the big fuss?

Definition of trailing and leading from spokecalc.io: here the wheel is turning clockwise, trailing spokes ‘pull’ the rim, leading spokes ‘push’ the rim:

And also here, Jim Langley on his YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/4kVlmOjgdAs

From the Rohloff website; the wheel is also turning clockwise, but the trailing and leading spokes are labelled the wrong way round!

Also note that the ‘pulling’ spoke is an outbound spoke that is wrapped around the hub flange – what we’d expect to see in a conventional wheel, but didn’t Rohloff previously say this wasn’t a good idea?

The other piece of advice that I took away from the Rohloff site was to avoid crossing spokes above one of the hub bolts on the left hand side of the hub. I’m guessing this part of the hub is slightly weaker and they wanted to take stress away from it:

So who’s right here, can you just lace the Rohloff hub in the usual way, or do we have to do something special?

Time to hit Google hard and not take no for an answer!

Cyclingabout.com have a blog post on their site about lacing Rohloff hubs from 2013: https://www.cyclingabout.com/how-to-build-a-strong-rohloff-wheel/ which says that the photos in the Rohloff instructions are correct – but also that they’ve confused Leading and Trailing in the labels!

Given the age of that post, I wasn’t sure how up to date the information was, so I decided to dig further…

The largest thread I found discussing this issue was on the Thorn Cycles forum from January 2020. Their riders are big fans of the Rohloff hubs, and are keen to get the build right. Not surprisingly, they were confused by the conflicting advice given by Rohloff, which had then been repeated by others.

That thread referenced a blog post from the designer of Thorn cycles, Andy Blance, who has written extensively about living with Rohloff hubs. All of the advice and fuss is designed to take care of an issue Rohloff had with some of their hub flanges cracking – not what you want when you’re miles from home!

https://thorncyclesforum.co.uk/index.php?topic=13694.0

The initial advice was around picking the right spokes with an appropriate bend in the head, and making sure the spoke heads didn’t have any burrs on them that might lead to stress risers in the flange. This is probably mostly redundant, in that any quality spoke will already be free of sharp edges and fine to build with.

As well as that advice, they also recommended lacing the spokes so the ‘pulling’ (trailing) spokes are inbound, so they don’t press against the outside of the hub flange.

It was here that I decided I’d read enough and went and built my wheel… I should have kept reading!

Andy has an addendum to his blog which blows most of that out of the water! From 17th Feb 2020:

I’ve just completed a series of emails with Rohloff. They’ve confirmed that there are now no directives in place regarding whether spoke heads should be on the inside or outside of the flange.

They no longer insist that wheels must be built symmetrically.

Rohloff are adamant that if the correct spokes, are first checked for burrs and then built at the correct tension, the chances of flange failure are very remote.

Andy B.

https://www.sjscycles.com/thornpdf/ThornLivingWithARohloff.pdf

So… we’re back to square one again: the Rohloff website is just showing us a standard lacing pattern, albeit one with the leading and trailing spoke labels swapped around!

And relax!

After all that fun, what we’re left with is the definitive guide that I headed this post with:

• Go for a 2 cross spoke pattern; the size of the hub dictates this, a 3 cross pattern would mean the spoke entering the rim at too sharp an angle, at least on a 29″ wheel. You might need to go 1 cross on a smaller rim, your friendly spoke calculator should help.
• Use Sapim Race, or DT Swiss Competition spokes; these have the correct diameter heads and being top quality, they shouldn’t have any rough edges that might dig into the hub flanges.
• Lace your inbound and outbound spokes as normal, but…
• Lace them so you’re not crossing spokes directly over the hubcap screws on the non drive side.
• You can use either the symmetric (rim brake) or asymmetric (disc brake) spoke pattern.

And you’re welcome: hopefully this post will help people make sense of this whole business – and make sure we’re all headed off into the wilderness with some reliable wheels!

Even if you can’t trust all you read on the Internet (or the manufacturer’s website) at least you can trust your eyes on the Spanner Bike blog, and trust Spanner [wheel]smith with your wheel builds, especially now for Rohloff hubs!