Building Wheels

[oldpotatoe]

Originally Posted by TunaAndBikes

How did you start?
Where should I start?
How deep of a rabbit hole am I in for?

I went to a night school at Colley Ave bike shop in Norfolk Virginia.
Last two classes of 8 were building wheels.

I'd maybe find a local somebody and see if they can teach you the intricacies of lacing and wheel building.

Find some basic hubs and rims...get some spokes and build a couple of wheels. Have the local guy check them. Use his 'stuff', tools maybe before you take the truing stand, dishing tool, spoke key and tension meter...plunge.

I do have Jobst and Gerd Schraner's books but I bought them after I started building wheels. They pretty much confirmed what Mike Howard(teacher at Colley Ave) taught me.

BUT, pretty tough to just read and book and do, IMHO. Lots of little aspects of true, round, dish and tension that a book may not convey. Since each effects the others some.

[oldpotatoe]

Originally Posted by Repack Rider

When I started building "klunker" bikes in the '70s, I had to learn how to build a wheel with a drum brake hub.

Gary Fisher showed me how to fan the spokes out when you drop them in the hub.

Later, I built most of the wheels at MountainBikes. I could knock out a pair in half an hour.

From a pile of spokes, nipples, hub and rim to built wheel in 15 minutes...

Hmmm...I know a gent who started building at Colorado Cyclist. Later worked for me..mid-90s. VERY good wheel builder and when at CC, he said he could build 8 wheels in 8 hours...I'm at about 90 minutes per wheel, even after 39 years and 'about' 5000 wheels..depending. EVERY rim/hub/spoke combo is a little different. Even if they are the same brand of stuff.

But if ya can do a reliable wheel in 15 minutes..good on ya.

[oldpotatoe]

Originally Posted by nspace

Another vote for the Musson book, it is an excellent resource.

I feel like some people make wheelbuilding out to be some dark art, and there are so many myths. It is not that hard to build a wheel set that will last for years if you take your time and use quality parts.

Adding to the tool list:

• the EVT multifinder is a nice tool and I like it better than a nipple driver when lacing the wheel, there is enough friction on the to turn the nipple onto the threads
• get a twist resist tool if you plan to build with 2.0/1.5/2.0 spokes or thinner (like a DT Revolution of Sapim Laser) to combat spoke wind up

Other tips from my personal experience:

• have never needed to use any sort of thread locker/fancy spoke prep product, other than linseed oil on threads, and Phil's tenacious on eyelets/nipple seat
• measure ERD yourself when you can, especially with the nipples you plan to use, especially if building with double square nipples
• alloy nipples get a bad rep; I avoid them for wheel sets that are going to see a ton of abuse and road salt, but for a performance bike they are great if you buy high quality ones (ex: Sapim 7075 nipples, not eBay junk)
• use a dish tool, not the calipers on your truing stand
• tension meter is handy, but its easy to go crazy and try to overthink it trying to chase perfection
• don't get distracted, see whatever task through that you are doing so you don't loose track of where you left off

-GREAT idea..I even use mine on some final tensioning with lighter rims and just 'normal' Sapim Race spokes(14/15/14)
-Same, never any 'glue..Lindseed oil and synthetic motor oil between nipple and rim. Tension keeps spokes tight, not 'glue'
-I use a set of Wheelsmith rods..I measure EVERY rim and hub. I've seen some websites make mistakes on ERD and hub dimensions..Even DT and Velocity. I use
https://leonard.io/edd/ for spoke calc but there are many online.
-I generally don't use alloy nipples..even the pretty tough ones from DT(Squorx) or from Sapim. They do nothing.
-yup
-I'd say a tension meter is essential. No wheel builder can tell proper and even tension with their hands. Tone? Maybe but just even, not 'proper'.

Wheel design and building is great fun, for some. It can be frustrating to get those 4 variables proper all at the same time..again..because each effects the others.

[El Chaba]

Originally Posted by oldpotatoe

From a pile of spokes, nipples, hub and rim to built wheel in 15 minutes...

Hmmm...I know a gent who started building at Colorado Cyclist. Later worked for me..mid-90s. VERY good wheel builder and when at CC, he said he could build 8 wheels in 8 hours...I'm at about 90 minutes per wheel, even after 39 years and 'about' 5000 wheels..depending. EVERY rim/hub/spoke combo is a little different. Even if they are the same brand of stuff.

But if ya can do a reliable wheel in 15 minutes..good on ya.

This makes me feel better….I am very methodical but slow. I think it takes me about 3-4 hours per wheel. It’s a good thing that I do it for myself and friends as it would be a losing proposition to be paid by the hour.

I built my first wheels back when I was 15. My science teacher was a cyclist and encouraged me to do it. It was great as he showed me what to do and then let me do it and then helped out as needed. From there each set got a little better as I learned new things. I guess I was always critiquing my own wheels against others that either worked or didn’t for one reason or another. By the time I was in my twenties, I ended up building most of the wheels for my teammates as mine seemed to be holding together when others were going out of whack for one reason or another. I think the secret is practice, being a harsh critic of your own work and learning everything that you can about the science behind the process. I think it was easier to build wheels in the 5-7 speed era as the dishing of modern wheels introduces quite a bit of intolerance to any errors.

[Coluber42]

I've built basically all my wheels for over 20 years. I have found it to be a valuable life skill for several reasons, not least of which is that I taught it to my date 20 years ago and he's still with me.

I agree that a good place to start is to take an old wheel, de-tension all the spokes, and re-tension it from scratch. Choose an un-damaged wheel though - if the rim is actually bent, you'll have a hard time getting the tension even AND the wheel straight and it will make you crazy. I suggest one that has at least 28 spokes as well.

Go slowly, and make small adjustments at a time. Work in increments of 1/4 turn, 1/2 turn, full turn, etc - but not random un-repeatable amounts. You can easily keep to that by paying attention to when the spoke wrench is parallel with the rim or 90° to the rim.

A good truing stand will make your life much easier, but you can get by without one. I once had a crash and taco'd my wheel on my way to a camp where I was teaching for a week. I had a new rim sent to me there, and I rebuilt my wheel using my upside down bike, front rack, some electrical tape, and a couple of pine needles as a truing stand. It came out fine and that wheel is still in use on that bike. (Another reason I consider it a good life skill)

https://www.instagram.com/p/qSdZ3jgP6C/

[LouDeeter]

It was about 1982, I was in the Army in the DC area. I broke a spoke on the drive side of the rear wheel. I went to a bike shop and they wanted something like $25 to replace the spoke. Told me I was paying for labor, the spoke, their knowledge and the cost for tools. $25 seemed a lot 42 years ago. I researched it. Found out about freewheel removers, chainwhips, spoke length, and truing tools--spoke wrench, truing stand, and dish tool. No internet in those days, so it was a struggle to find information. I opted for the first one to get the minimum. It would be a few years before I added a truing stand and dish tool and by that time, I felt I was proficient enough to try my hand at building a wheel. Read the Jobst Brandt book, which explained a lot about the theory and steps. Today, I have a large selection of used & new spokes and while I don't find myself building many wheels, I do keep my neighborhood on the road by truing spokes and the occasional spoke replacement. I do still screw up and find the valve stem between crossing spokes, but never bothered me if it was going to be my wheel.

[oldpotatoe]

Originally Posted by LouDeeter

It was about 1982, I was in the Army in the DC area. I broke a spoke on the drive side of the rear wheel. I went to a bike shop and they wanted something like $25 to replace the spoke. Told me I was paying for labor, the spoke, their knowledge and the cost for tools. $25 seemed a lot 42 years ago. I researched it. Found out about freewheel removers, chainwhips, spoke length, and truing tools--spoke wrench, truing stand, and dish tool. No internet in those days, so it was a struggle to find information. I opted for the first one to get the minimum. It would be a few years before I added a truing stand and dish tool and by that time, I felt I was proficient enough to try my hand at building a wheel. Read the Jobst Brandt book, which explained a lot about the theory and steps. Today, I have a large selection of used & new spokes and while I don't find myself building many wheels, I do keep my neighborhood on the road by truing spokes and the occasional spoke replacement. I do still screw up and find the valve stem between crossing spokes, but never bothered me if it was going to be my wheel.

As an aside, my teacher taught that on a 32h wheel, where parallel spokes 'could' be at the seam and valve stem..You 'could' lace(and he taught me how) so crossed spokes were at the 'weakest spots on the rim'..the seam and valve hole. He called it 'race lace'..I did that on a couple of customer's wheels, about 4 years later when I was in a shop..and they both complained that I 'laced it wrong', so haven't done that since.

[carpediemracing]

Originally Posted by oldpotatoe

From a pile of spokes, nipples, hub and rim to built wheel in 15 minutes...

But if ya can do a reliable wheel in 15 minutes..good on ya.

I worked with a guy that worked in a bike factory in South America before working in our shop. Factory means identical length spokes, identical rims, hubs. He said he could build a kids' bike wheel in 8-12 minutes, and I believed him.

In the shop, depending on spoke count, he could knock out wheels in 15-20 minutes.

My record (and it wasn't necessarily a speed build, it was just a build where nothing went wrong), for a race-able (meaning I raced it) front wheel (no dish, same spoke lengths left and right), 28 spoke, mountain bike rim (machined brake surfaces so less critical on truing, nipple eyelets so no lost nipples in the rim), x2, 1.8mm db Wheelsmith spokes and allow nipples, was about 18 minutes. I even did alternating spoke nipple colors, which was a thing I liked to do on my own wheels, using 4 different nipple colors. No power tools either, which I guess could help. Used a nipple driver, screwdriver to flatten the J bends, and the older regular Park truing stand. Park spoke nipple tools.

Now, from measuring ERD, looking up hubs (in the old Wheelsmith book), getting spokes, etc, it took longer. We only counted time after you had the pile of spokes, hub, rim, truing stand on the bench or in the vise (depending on who it was, some preferred one over the other). We used an analog clock so basically rounded to about a minute.

I still have all the tools, but the last time I built a wheel was a while ago, maybe 7 or 8 years ago? I've laced over a lot of rims but that's extremely time consuming, relatively speaking (at least an hour a wheel, closer to two hours), and all of them had no eyelets (HED Stinger, Reynolds DV46, Zipp 440, some DT alloy disc brake rim) so I chased the odd spoke nipple around the rim. I think one wheel took me a couple years as I had it half laced over and didn't want to deal with it. Oh, that was the Eurus front. There were internal nipple washers that needed to sit on the rim, and they'd fall into the rim... it was a pain. And I didn't need the wheel, and ironically, after I pushed to finish it (it would be a spare front for my track bike) I never used it.

[El Chaba]

When I mentioned in the earlier post that I was slow and methodical with wheelbuilding, it would probably be more accurate to note that a fair amount of OCD is involved. I can’t imagine building a wheel with spokes crossing over the valve stem. In addition to that, though, if there is a label or oil hole on the hub, you MUST be able to sight down the valve hole and see that feature directly.
For Jedi-level puzzle solving, you can try to get all of this to work out on a MaxiCar rear hub that has the drive side spoke holes in pairs with a key way between each pair. The advantage of this is that you can replace a spoke without removing the freewheel AND the spacing is calculated so that there is only one spoke length for both sides of the rear which also matches the front. The spokes on the drive side can only go in one orientation so you learn that there can be a droit and gauche version of the lacing while appearing otherwise identical.

[StressStrain]

Some great OCD, nuance, and tips in this thread!

I personally cannot imagine building a wheel without being able to look down the valve hole to see the hub logo. Gotta be aligned like that and have parallel spokes around the valve. Anything less is careless or pedestrian.

[Mark McM]

Originally Posted by oldpotatoe

As an aside, my teacher taught that on a 32h wheel, where parallel spokes 'could' be at the seam and valve stem..You 'could' lace(and he taught me how) so crossed spokes were at the 'weakest spots on the rim'..the seam and valve hole. He called it 'race lace'..I did that on a couple of customer's wheels, about 4 years later when I was in a shop..and they both complained that I 'laced it wrong', so haven't done that since.

Orienting the lacing so the spokes cross at the valve hole might sound like a good idea on the surface, but if you look more deeply into it, it doesn't make much sense. Firstly, there is little difference in force on the rim between parallel spokes and crossed spokes (I showed the calculations for this in another thread), so it makes little difference either way. But even in that small difference, it would still be better for the valve hole to be between parallel spokes.

For a 32 spoke wheel with spoke tension of 100 kg (220 lb.), the aggregate tension of all the spokes pulling inward on the rim creates about a 1000 lb. circumferential compression on the rim. Due to all this force compressing the rim, the rim is not going to be "pulled apart" by forces experienced by normal riding, and not even by most crash forces either. As you note above, the weakest part of the rim is at the valve hole, where the rim cross-section area is the smallest. All the compressive force on the rim already just from static spoke tension just reduces the extra force (from, say, hitting bumps) required to damage to the rim. So at the weakest point on the rim, you'd want to minimize the static compressive force, to maximum the extra force needed to damage the rim. Because the compressive loads from static spoke tension is slightly less between parallel spokes, you'd want to orient the the spoke lacing to put the valve hole between parallel spokes.

The main benefit of orienting the valve hole between parallel spokes is for extra clearance for connecting a pump to the valve. And while small, the differences in rim compression force (due to spoke tension) between parallel and cross spokes also favors locating the valve hole between parallel spokes.

[oldpotatoe]

Originally Posted by Mark McM

Orienting the lacing so the spokes cross at the valve hole might sound like a good idea on the surface, but if you look more deeply into it, it doesn't make much sense. Firstly, there is little difference in force on the rim between parallel spokes and crossed spokes (I showed the calculations for this in another thread), so it makes little difference either way. But even in that small difference, it would still be better for the valve hole to be between parallel spokes.

For a 32 spoke wheel with spoke tension of 100 kg (220 lb.), the aggregate tension of all the spokes pulling inward on the rim creates about a 1000 lb. circumferential compression on the rim. Due to all this force compressing the rim, the rim is not going to be "pulled apart" by forces experienced by normal riding, and not even by most crash forces either. As you note above, the weakest part of the rim is at the valve hole, where the rim cross-section area is the smallest. All the compressive force on the rim already just from static spoke tension just reduces the extra force (from, say, hitting bumps) required to damage to the rim. So at the weakest point on the rim, you'd want to minimize the static compressive force, to maximum the extra force needed to damage the rim. Because the compressive loads from static spoke tension is slightly less between parallel spokes, you'd want to orient the the spoke lacing to put the valve hole between parallel spokes.

The main benefit of orienting the valve hole between parallel spokes is for extra clearance for connecting a pump to the valve. And while small, the differences in rim compression force (due to spoke tension) between parallel and cross spokes also favors locating the valve hole between parallel spokes.

I know Mark and this was in 1985..a 'few' years ago and I was brand new to this wheelbuilding gig. Never said it was a good idea, just that that's what he taught.

But thanks for the physics of why it's not needed...

[Bob Ross]

Originally Posted by benb

I would not get into building boats, repairing watches, or making my own guitars unless I gave up bicycling.

Oh man, so much ^^^this!

I can definitely see how building wheels can be rewarding, both in terms of winding up with a unique product that gets used, but also in terms of the therapeutic value of the process. But those N hours spent wheelbuilding would definitely eat into time spent doing other things...like riding a bike that already has two wheels. Just yesterday I had to do a thorough (and long-overdue) drivetrain clean & lube on one bike...and so wound up not riding yesterday.

Life is short. Days are shorter. Find a hobby...not a dozen hobbies!

[StressStrain]

Originally Posted by Bob Ross

Oh man, so much ^^^this!

I can definitely see how building wheels can be rewarding, both in terms of winding up with a unique product that gets used, but also in terms of the therapeutic value of the process. But those N hours spent wheelbuilding would definitely eat into time spent doing other things...like riding a bike that already has two wheels. Just yesterday I had to do a thorough (and long-overdue) drivetrain clean & lube on one bike...and so wound up not riding yesterday.

Life is short. Days are shorter. Find a hobby...not a dozen hobbies!

I like to build wheels in the winter when it's icy and salty. This way I can get time with the bike when I can't ride it.

[Gabe77]

Originally Posted by Hindmost

Start?

I started with a spoke wrench and a need to replace a damaged rim. (And a lack of funds to pay a LBS.)

Easier to start with truing or repairing an existing wheel.

Older wheels are easier with respect to standardized parts: hubs, spokes, rims, etc.

I disagree. Old stuff is usually dirty, fouled in some way - like rounded nipples and generally unpleasant. Its a real pleasure to sit down with clean spanking new components and tools. I now ride on all self-built wheels.