Spoke breakage is one of the most frustrating issues a cyclist can face. Whether you’re racing, touring, or riding off-road, a broken spoke compromises both performance and safety.
At TMWORKS, we specialize in high-precision, high-durability wheel building. Spoke reliability is at the heart of this process. Here’s why spokes break, and how our build standards help you ride longer, harder, and without any worries.
1. Poor spoke quality = shorter lifespan
One of the leading causes of spoke failure is poor spoke quality. Most commonly, this shows up as breakage at the spoke head, where the spoke enters the hub. Cheaper metals and/or cheaper manufacturing methods create weak points in the spoke that simply can’t hold up under long-term stress compared to higher grade spokes that are produced in a better controlled production process.
That’s why at TMWORKS, we mainly build with Alpina spokes, an Italian company with a long-standing engineering legacy. Starting in the motorbike industry, Alpina began producing bicycle spokes in the mid-1970s, transferring decades of high-load performance expertise into lightweight cycling applications.
We’ve received fatigue test data comparing Alpina's Ultralite and Sapim's CX-Ray spokes. The verdict? Alpina’s spokes outperform Sapim’s in fatigue resistance and tensile testing, making them our clear choice for high quality builds.
2. Spoke tension variance: precision is everything
Another major contributor to spoke breakage is high spoke tension variance. If one spoke is under- or over-tensioned relative to its neighbors, it absorbs uneven stress during riding. Eventually, the spoke will break.
At TMWORKS, we aim to make this problem nonexistent. Our spoke tension variance is kept to an industry-leading maximum of 2.5%. A level of detail that not many wheel brands build by. And for good reason: it takes time, attention to detail, and high quality tools to reach such a standard.
3. Incorrect spoke length = nipple failures
Breakage at the spoke nipple is often a symptom of incorrect spoke length. Too short? You lose thread engagement. Too long? The spoke bottoms out in the nipple and creates internal stress. Both scenarios increase the chance of failure.
We calculate every spoke length using SpokeCalc and refine it further in practice to account for: nipple type, different rim- and hub specs, as well as spoke stretch under load.
This way, we take the guess work out of spoke length, ensuring a high quality wheel build.
4. Destressing: the final step most wheels never get
Even after a well-tensioned build, residual stress remains in the spokes. If not addressed, this tension imbalance can cause spokes to shift or break over time, or make a wheel run out of true.
That’s why every TMWORKS wheel undergoes a destressing process. And soon, we’ll be sharing something entirely new. An innovation that will further raise the bar in our high quality wheel builds. But more on that to come soon!
5. Mid-spoke breakage = impact or underbuilt wheels
When a spoke breaks in the middle, the cause is rarely poor building—it's almost always impact-related. Gravel, sticks, rocks, or even a derailleur can do the damage. Lighter spokes, while great for saving weight, contain less material and are more prone to failure in these conditions.
If your riding involves heavy gravel, wooded trails with debris, bikepacking or loaded touring
...then we’ll guide you toward stronger, more impact-resistant spokes without compromising performance. Altough adding weight, sturdier builds don’t have to mean sluggish rides.
Ready for a wheelset that is built to last?
At TMWORKS, we take pride in each wheelset we build. With the right materials, exact measurements, and unmatched spoke tension variance, you'll be riding around worry free!