#1
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Wheel building
Lots of people on here say how easy it is to build a wheel. I remain
unconvinced though! So, has anyone taken the plunge and built a wheel that was a success first time round? Experienced wheel-builders seem to knock them out for a past-time (but unless you're doing it professionally why do you need to keep building wheels?), but I'd like to hear from people who might have just built one or two without any problems :-) I was horrified to notice a very badly worn rear rim yesterday, and I will admit to chickening out and buying a wheel from the BoB (who do know how to build wheels!). I will at least have my old wheel to practise on, I suppose for the future! -- Paul Boyd http://www.paul-boyd.co.uk/ |
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#2
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Wheel building
in message , Paul Boyd
') wrote: Lots of people on here say how easy it is to build a wheel. I remain unconvinced though! So, has anyone taken the plunge and built a wheel that was a success first time round? Yes, my first pair of wheels remained true until the bike they were on was stolen three years later. There's something very satisfying about riding on your own handiwork. -- (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/ ;; When your hammer is C++, everything begins to look like a thumb. |
#3
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Wheel building
"Paul Boyd" wrote [snip] So, has anyone taken the plunge and built a wheel that was a success first time round? Experienced wheel-builders seem to knock them out for a past-time (but unless you're doing it professionally why do you need to keep building wheels?), but I'd like to hear from people who might have just built one or two without any problems :-) [snip] I must have built at least half a dozen, but, since that has been spread out over 30 years or so, it's like being a novice each time. Once I did it wrong, and found the spokes crossing over to obstruct the valve hole. I swore a bit, and moved all the spokes round by one spoke hole. I'm slow too. I would starve if I had to do it professionally, and didn't speed up. I've built wheels by reading instructions from a book, and I've done it by copying a identical wheel. It helps if you have spokes of *exactly* the right length, so that you can see just a few turns of the threads when the spoke nipples are tightened up. Rims and spokes are made amazingly precisely, so the wheel will be pretty round if you see the same number of threads sticking out of the spoke nipple (towards the hub - you don't want a too long spoke that sticks out where the inner tube goes). Professionals can probably get away with a spoke that is slightly too long. You can file those too long ends off, but a too long spoke won't show any threads, losing you the helpful short cut in truing. There is, or at least was, a book, "Sutherland's Handbook for Cycle Mechanics" which has tables of spoke lengths needed for different makes of hub and rim. The book has got thicker, and more expensive, over the years, but I imagine bike shops would have a copy, or some equivalent. Because spoke length matters less, I think, to professionals, some bike shops will try to sell you the wrong length spoke, if they don't have quite the right length in stock. If you have to dish the wheel, as you will for a back wheel, then the spokes on the two sides will be of slightly different lengths, not enough to need to buy two kinds of spoke, but enough to get two different numbers for your spoke thread counts. If the rim is slightly out of round, as with a beat-up old rim, I can't help you. Flat spots, from hitting something, such as landing after a jump, are the usual problem. Some people, claim that they can get the rim round again by tightening spokes appropriately, or by beating on the rim with a rubber mallet (into a mould) but I usually can't When you have built the wheel, you have to true it. In fact there are a lot more times you have to true a wheel than build one. My theory is that a factory, machine built, wheel ought to be as good as a hand built wheel, provided the factory wheel is hand trued after being built. Cheap machine built wheels don't get de-stressed, either at the factory, or in the bike shop, so you will likely need to de-stress your wheel when you get your new bike, or new wheel, home. The reason for de-stressing is that when you screw a nipple onto a spoke, screwing the nipple twists the spoke rather, winding the spoke up like a spring. If you leave the spoke wound up, it will gradually try to unwind itself, thereby unscrewing itself from the spoke nipple, and messing up the trueness of the wheel, after some miles of riding. To de-stress a wheel you prop the wheel up between floor and wall, so it is at 45 deg to the horizontal. You then lean on the rim where the rim is furthest away from wall or floor. By leaning on the rim you bend the rim slightly, enough for some spoke nipples to be loose in their holes in the rim. The loose nipples let the wound up spokes unwind themselves, which will make a sort of creaking noise as it happens. To let more spokes de-stress, turn the wheel round by a few degrees, and repeat the leaning. When you have gone all the way round, and turned the wheel over and done it from the other side, there should be no more creaking, which means the spokes will no longer try to unwind themselves. Actually, after you have de-stressed the wheel it will probably be worth while to true the wheel again, to get it exactly right. I will let somebody else talk about wheel truing Jeremy Parker |
#4
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Wheel building
Ace wrote:
On Wed, 11 Jul 2007 17:37:45 +0100, Paul Boyd wrote: Lots of people on here say how easy it is to build a wheel. I remain unconvinced though! So, has anyone taken the plunge and built a wheel that was a success first time round? Yupp. As I said up there ^^^ I followed Sheldon's destructions and had no problems. The only thing I did differently was dispense with the 'dishing tool' that he shows you how to make. I did not dish my first wheel whilst tensioning it. (A front wheel). All I did was calculate the difference in length between the left and right spokes, measure (or guestimate) the thread pitch. When lacing the wheel I then tightened the spokes on the short spoke side the extra bit to centre the wheel. When I finished tensioning and trueing the wheel, it looked dished enough by eye so I used it like that. Martin. |
#5
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Wheel building
On Wed, 11 Jul 2007, Paul Boyd wrote:
Lots of people on here say how easy it is to build a wheel. I remain unconvinced though! I was unconvinced right up until I'd finished my first. So, has anyone taken the plunge and built a wheel that was a success first time round? Experienced wheel-builders seem to knock them out for a past-time (but unless you're doing it professionally why do you need to keep building wheels?), but I'd like to hear from people who might have just built one or two without any problems :-) My first one was a bit time-consuming and I partly laced it wrong and had to dismantle and re-do half the spokes. I needed to tweak it after a few hundred miles. My second never had any maintenance ever. If you take it slow and steady, your first while might take a bit of time, but it will be better than a machine-built wheel. Your second will be much better - probably as good as you can buy without tracking down a world expert (but of course you'll take longer than someone that's practised). I was horrified to notice a very badly worn rear rim yesterday, and I will admit to chickening out and buying a wheel from the BoB I once bought a wheel from them because they had a particular hub and rim I wanted. So of course, I also needed spokes and they were going to charge me more to work out the spokes to go with the hub and rim I'd selected than they would to build the wheel. I couldn't understand that - they had to work out the spoke length to build the wheel themselves, but charged me less if they did that and then went on to do more work than if they stopped after having got the spoke length. Your second wheel should be as good as you get from them (in that my BoB wheel has never needed attention, and my own 2nd wheel has never needed attention). Just do it - you know you want to. regards, Ian SMith -- |\ /| no .sig |o o| |/ \| |
#6
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Wheel building
On 11/07/2007 20:31, Ian Smith said,
Your second wheel should be as good as you get from them (in that my BoB wheel has never needed attention, and my own 2nd wheel has never needed attention). I had a wheel from them a couple of years ago, and it is still as tight and true as it was new. Just do it - you know you want to. I do, don't I? When the new wheel arrives, I'll strip down the old one and have a go at rebuilding it. Then I might well wonder why I paid for a new one (although from what you've said it might be cheaper than buying the bits anyway. Uh?) -- Paul Boyd http://www.paul-boyd.co.uk/ |
#7
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Wheel building
Paul Boyd wrote:
Lots of people on here say how easy it is to build a wheel. I remain unconvinced though! So, has anyone taken the plunge and built a wheel that was a success first time round? Experienced wheel-builders seem to knock them out for a past-time (but unless you're doing it professionally why do you need to keep building wheels?), but I'd like to hear from people who might have just built one or two without any problems :-) My first ones took a long time to get right because of inexperience but have performed well. As I built more wheels I found I spent less time reading the instructions and so building goes quicker plus I now know what needs to be done rather than tentatively experimenting. Tony |
#8
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Wheel building
In article , Ace writes: | On Wed, 11 Jul 2007 17:37:45 +0100, Paul Boyd | wrote: | | Lots of people on here say how easy it is to build a wheel. I remain | unconvinced though! | | So, has anyone taken the plunge and built a wheel that was a success | first time round? | | Yupp. As I said up there ^^^ I followed Sheldon's destructions and had | no problems. The only thing I did differently was dispense with the | 'dishing tool' that he shows you how to make. I found that putting the | wheel in the frame (upside-down, of course) and attaching a couple of | allen keys or similar with sticky tape allowed trueing to be simply | performed and a similar arrangement at 90deg to get the wheel properly | centred. I did the same, except WITHOUT reading any instructions! Yes, my first ones took forever, and I misestimated the length of the spokes, so had to file them down, but I didn't have any major problems. As I have said before, that is building a wheel (i.e. with a model to copy) - designing a wheel is something I have not done, and would need instructions for. And, as other people observed, even my first wheel outperformed the ones I bought. Regards, Nick Maclaren. |
#9
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Wheel building
On 11/07/2007 21:28, Nick Maclaren said,
designing a wheel is something I have not done, and would need instructions for. Inspiration from http://www.terminalvelocity.demon.co.uk/WheelBuild/ perhaps! I do like the "3 leading 3 trailing" wheel, but something more basic might be better to start with :-) -- Paul Boyd http://www.paul-boyd.co.uk/ |
#10
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Wheel building
In article , Paul Boyd wrote:
Lots of people on here say how easy it is to build a wheel. I remain unconvinced though! So, has anyone taken the plunge and built a wheel that was a success first time round? Experienced wheel-builders seem to knock them out for a past-time (but unless you're doing it professionally why do you need to keep building wheels?), Because you enjoy it and have friends who appreciate hand-built wheels? Just a guess. but I'd like to hear from people who might have just built one or two without any problems :-) I've built two without problems, but one was a 20" wheel which is likely to be strong even if not well built (and it is using the wrong size spokes, a rim from a scrap bike, and a 25 year old SA hub), and the other was for a spare bike that doesn't get used much (and was using a used freehub, used rim, and re-using spokes), so I can't really claim too much for them. |
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