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/

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.

"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

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.

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|
|/ \|

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/

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

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.

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/

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.