I think that what I am attempting to do has not quite been covered in this thread yet, so maybe my efforts will yield some useful information…
I just acquired a 9c front hub that I want to put in a 20” wheel. A DD hub in a small wheel would seem to require radial lacing, but I wanted to see if I could come up with something different. As I was browsing the Danscomp website for spokes, I saw that they had
Sun City Lite 48H rims on sale for $10. With the dual advantages of being super-cheap and allowing non-radial lacing, I decided to figure out what I could do with it.
So how to fit a big 36H hub into a small 48H rim? Oh, and this particular rim has the added constraint of off-center holes, so preferably I needed to devise a pattern that laces L-L and R-R.
I came up with a couple variations. The red dots are right side, green are left. None of the spokes are actually radial, and the crossed spokes exit the rim within the 12-13 degree rule-of-thumb angle, so I should have decent torque transfer without excessive bending stress on the spokes or nipples. Here’s the first pattern:
One concern I have with this pattern is that the driving torque will be biased to one side and regen torque will be biased to the other side. A variation on this pattern un-crosses every other pair of crossed spokes, turning them into V’s and reversing their torque direction, although this reduces the out-of-radial angle a bit (good for nipples, bad for torque).
Experienced builders, let me know if this is nuts, or if there are some problems or challenges to this approach I may not have thought of. Thanks!