A butted spoke isn't uniform: the shop-floor example is 2,0/1,8/2,0 mm, two millimeters at both ends and 1,8 mm along the long straight section. The thin section stretches more under load and absorbs part of the cycle that, in a straight-gauge spoke, reaches the elbow and the thread intact. That's exactly where spokes break: in Gavin's 1996 fatigue study, 68 of 76 failed at the elbow and 8 at the thread; none through the middle.
A thinner middle isn't a spoke cut short: it's a section built to give before the elbow does.
The three numbers describe the spoke's diameter in millimeters, end to end: 2,0/1,8/2,0 is the reference example, two millimeters at the tips and 1,8 along the long stretch between the elbow and the thread. The thin section isn't a manufacturing shortcut or a cheaper spoke: it's geometry done on purpose.
Against it stands the single-gauge spoke, straight-gauge, the same diameter tip to tip. It's simpler and cheaper to make, and it's what most budget wheels ship with. The difference doesn't show at a glance; you need calipers on two points of the shank to catch it.
A spoke doesn't break from being pulled hard: it breaks from the cycle. Every wheel revolution, each spoke's tension rises and falls a little as it passes through the loaded zone, and that back-and-forth, repeated thousands of times per kilometer, is what fatigues the metal. The thin section of a butted spoke is more elastic than the thick one: it stretches more for the same change in force.
That extra give absorbs part of the cycle before it reaches the two points where the spoke stops being a smooth cylinder: the elbow, where the wire is cold-bent, and the thread, where the diameter changes abruptly. A straight-gauge spoke, stiffer along its whole length, spreads less of that swing and lets more of it arrive intact right at those two weak points.
Henri Gavin fatigue-tested 76 spokes in 1996 and published where each one failed: 68 at the elbow, the point where the wire cold-worked when it was bent, 8 at the thread, and none through the central section. The finding is literal: failure occurred at the cold-worked elbow in 68 spokes, and in the remaining 8 it occurred at the threads.
The spokes in that study were single-gauge, 1.83 mm, from the mid-eighties — not butted. That makes the argument stronger, not weaker: even with no thin section to absorb load, failure still concentrated at the elbow and the thread. Those are the spoke's weak points on their own, gauge design aside, and they're exactly what a butted spoke is built to protect.
Less material along the spoke's longest section weighs less than the same stretch at single gauge. It's simple geometry: less steel volume, less mass. But we don't have a manufacturer figure here saying how many grams that saves per spoke or per wheel.
We won't invent one. Chasing a weight-by-gauge table isn't something this file can back up today; if someone hands you an exact gram figure without citing where it comes from, ask for the source before repeating it.
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No. The thin section is more elastic and absorbs part of the tension cycle that, in a straight-gauge spoke, arrives more intact at the elbow and the thread, the two points where spokes actually break.
Those are the three shank diameters in millimeters: 2,0 mm at the tips (elbow and thread) and 1,8 mm along the long straight middle section. It's the reference example of a butted spoke, against a straight-gauge spoke of a single diameter.
In Gavin's fatigue study of 76 spokes, 68 broke at the elbow and 8 at the thread; none through the central section. Those spokes were single-gauge, not butted, which confirms the elbow and thread are the spoke's weak points on their own.
We don't have a verified manufacturer figure for that. Less material in the middle section weighs less by simple geometry, but there's no table in the sources we work from that puts a number in grams on it.
Where spokes break · How many spokes for my weight · Spoke length
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