Has anyone taken part in a wheel building course at all? I’m very loosely considering this one: London Bike Kitchen – Wheel Building

£80 for 6 hours tuition isn’t a bad price assuming I actually learn something.

I’m happy getting my hands dirty but when it comes to truing wheels I must admit I usually make things worse by over-tightening spokes and then causing more problems. This is all the more annoying because I have a decent truing stand which should make the process a lot easier (and it does, it’s me the **** up, not the stand).

I guess ultimately I’d like to be able to buy separate hubs and rims and build my own useable wheels for trail riding. Is that pie too high in the sky?

If you understand the basics then you might be better spending the £80 on a spoke tension gauge.

The rest is really just practice and patience.

£9 for the book

I self taught from this. more than adequate

Probably been said a million times on here but all you really need is Mussons book and a bit of time. It’s a fairly simple process that just needs to be followed. I did get a spoke tension meter just to give me a bit more confidence in the finished product, but not really required.

As well as the course you might consider buying Gerd Schraners book or this Roger Musson book (pdf)

edit: pah – beaten to it x 2

I guess ultimately I’d like to be able to buy separate hubs and rims and build my own useable wheels for trail riding. Is that pie too high in the sky?

Not high in the sky at all. All I used to build my first wheel was a read through the few paragraphs on Sheldon Brown. Not sure how someone could make a book out of it (or a 6 hour course)

I think it is one of those areas where people think it is harder than it is and lose confidence.
Follow the steps and take your time.

wwaswas

If you understand the basics then you might be better spending the £80 on a spoke tension gauge.

The rest is really just practice and patience.

Patience…. Something I’m still trying to master. 🙁

From speaking a work colleague who had a Saturday job in a LBS and whose step dad is a wheel builder, he reckons tension gauges are not necessary because to get a properly true wheel it might require the spokes to be at different tensions. His words were that “wheel building is more of an art than a science”. I’m guessing this could be true for the real expert pros but not for idiots like me. 🙂

thomthumb

£9 for the book

I self taught from this. more than adequate

Cheers, I’ll give that a look.

mrblobby

Probably been said a million times on here but all you really need is Mussons book and a bit of time. It’s a fairly simple process that just needs to be followed. I did get a spoke tension meter just to give me a bit more confidence in the finished product, but not really required.

Thanks for the suggestion, had never heard of the book before thomthumb and yourself mentioned it. 🙂

willyboy – Member

As well as the course you might consider buying Gerd Schraners book or this Roger Musson book (pdf)

edit: pah – beaten to it x 2

Lol – beaten at Internetz. 😀

he reckons tension gauges are not necessary because to get a properly true wheel it might require the spokes to be at different tensions

a small variation is usual (but only a few percent) but there’s a published range of acceptable tensions for each rim and for each spoke diameter so, if nothing else the gauge confirms you’re within both of those.

The gauge helps get an even tension around a wheel and, ime, makes it easier to end up with a decent build. Particularly if you’re not building dozens of wheels a week – I do one or two every few months at best.

I learnt from the guide on Sheldon Brown’s site.

It’s simple enough if you can follow the instructions.

A gauge does help, it’s entirely possible to build a really straight wheel with really uneven tension, especially first time. I use the gauge at the start of each ‘cycle’. So once you’ve tensioned it initially, run round the wheel a few times to get the tensions even (I aim for about 70% of the gauges range for that rim/spoke, so if it says 15-20, aim for 18-19). Then true it, then relieve it.

Tension,
True,
Relieve,
Tension,
True,
Relieve,
etc.

In general the more times you do that the more even the tension becomes and the longer the wheel lasts.

BUT, if you F*** up (usually by being in a hurry and doing more than one turn on each spoke at a time initially) you’ll end up with a wheel that never goes true/even. I’m sure an expert could save it by IME the only solution at that point is to start again. This is where a guage is useful, without it you’d be looking at a perfectly true wheel, and wouldn’t know it was wrong.

The other factor is rim stiffness. Roadie wheels, particularly very light ones flex a lot, which makes mistakes apparent, which is good for learning from them. My first MTB wheels looked great and rode fine and lasted a few months (because the tension was uneven). then I built my first road wheels, which looked great, but rode horribly, bought a tension meter, fixed both sets and they’ve been fine ever since (as have all subsequently built wheels!).

wwaswas – Member

If you understand the basics then you might be better spending the £80 on a spoke tension gauge.

The rest is really just practice and patience.

I’m not the most patient person in the World but wheel buiding has taught me this more than anything else. It’s an iterative process by which using various small adjustments you converge on a finished wheel.

I usually lace the wheels up on Day 1 and then leave them and tension and adjust on Day 2. It stops me getting impatient and trying to rush things and usually forking it up and having to start all over again.

thomthumb – Member

£9 for the book

I self taught from this. more than adequate

I did the same. I don’t think you can go wrong with Roger Musson’s book providing you follow all the steps and don’t try to jump any (patience again!)

Another Roger Musson graduate here

First set of wheels I made referring to the book lasted until the rims wore through

until the rims wore through

….because they were rubbing on the chainstays 😀

£80 for a wheel building course doesn’t sound so bad if you get to use their equipment to build the pair of wheels you are thinking of building. Gives you a chance to find out whether you want/what to buy to do it again in the future.

6 hrs is bugger all. I doubt you’ll learn much you can’t teach yourself from books. I did 2 days wheel building for my Cytech 2 and I reckon another 2 days would be closer to the mark….

….because they were rubbing on the chainstays

There’s always one… 😉

FWIW I’ve just built another wheel following Musson. Nice and true with good even tension in all the spokes. It really is just a mechanical process you need to follow (you can program a machine to do it so it’s certainly not an art!) Only tip really is to be patient and take it slowly when adding tension. Regularly check that the wheel is true.

If you are building a wheel for yourself you can just take your time (unless you need the wheel for tomorrow morning’s ride!). To a large extent it’s just a matter of following the sequence plus using a few tips that experienced wheelbuilders like Musson have chosen to pass on.

I found the hardest part was getting the lacing sorted out. Once you’ve done that and got to the “loose spokes but true” stage then it’s a matter of going along the “tension, true, relieve” cycle mentioned above.

My first wheel lasted a couple of years until I rode in to a gate 🙄

I learnt it from the Sheldon Brown website + youtube video showing how to lace the wheel. I found it hard to follow written instruction on how to lace it but easy watching a video. The first set of wheels are still going strong on a rigid 29er, haven’t had to true it in the year they’ve been going.

have a go, what could go wrong?

I used to teach them 😀

Always looked forward to them as it was quite a restful class once everyone had laced their first wheel up, and it gave us the opportunity to get *really* geeky which I never had the time to do in the usual maintenance classes.

For £85 we gave you a full day building two wheels with our equipment (DT spokes, mavic rims, shimano hubs), lunch, and as many cups of tea as you could drink.

We eventually stopped letting people bring their own stuff as the number of combinations and faffing with wrong spoke sizes etc was ageing me prematurely…

Anyway, totally agree with the above re: self teaching, but the class should let you mess around with somebody else’s components prior to having a go on your own.

I went on a course run by Roger Musson some years back, he handed out copies of his book at the end. I suppose the book alone would have been OK but I thought doing the course well worth while. Six hours with a good teacher is far from “bugger all”.

Pretty sure I’ve posted it before but I did this a few years ago: http://www.cambridgewheelbuilding.co.uk/index.html which is in Cambridge funnily enough.

Was very good just to have someone to guide you through the now-obvious first bits and to build confidence in a hands on way. Have since built somewhere between 10-15 pairs for myself and others. On the subject of tension meters I have the Park one and these days (ie. with some experience) more often that not when I go round the spokes towards the end of the build they are within 1 “notch” on the gauge of each other. It’s a good reassurance I find, but perhaps those with plenty of experience who say that a tension meter isn’t needed are right. In other words, if you build the wheel correctly then tensions will look after themselves and come out reasonably equal anyhow.

Quite pleased with today’s effort…

New winter wheel. Archetype on Ultegra hubs, DT Competition spokes, radially laced.

New winter wheel. Archetype on Ultegra hubs, DT Competition spokes, radially laced.

Purely out of interest, why would you choose to lace radially with that many spokes? Just aesthetics or another reason?

Aesthetics mostly 🙂 Brought a “factory” wheelset with 105 on OpenPro, also 32 spoke, a while back and it came radially laced and just thought it looked good. Rear will be 3 cross when I get the spokes.

You’ll get a kitten caught in those spokes mrblobby.

I think Musson addresses that in the next update of his book.

60 miles on the new wheel on Sunday. Still true with good tension. Feels good too. So +1 for Musson 🙂 Need to find time to build the rear one now.

another +1 for Musson’s book.

Built my first wheels last month with LB rims. First one isn’t perfect because I wasn’t patient enough! Second one isn’t too bad. Will have to de-tension the first one when I’m bored and do it again. It is good for the soul if you aren’t in a hurry.

Strong fingernails and repetition seems to be the trick for spoke tension but the recommended plectrum is bound to be better.

Purely out of interest, why would you choose to lace radially with that many spokes? Just aesthetics or another reason?

Because crossed spokes add nothing to a (rim braked) front wheel? Until disk brakes a lot of MTB wheels were built that way too.

Another related but untrue ‘fact’ is that the number of crosses is proportional to strength (because tandems have more crosses). What actually happens is tandems have 40-48 spokes and that means to get the same angles you need more crosses. Similarly <28 spokes and you struggle to make 3x work.

Strong fingernails and repetition seems to be the trick for spoke tension but the recommended plectrum is bound to be better.

Could probably do without it now but I’m still glad I got the Park Tools tension gauge.

No tension meter, & always built in a frame/fork.
Built from the Musson book.
Best tip…LUBE YOUR NIPPLES.

Latest attempt…

[url=https://flic.kr/p/ABGDmM]Untitled[/url] by pten2106, on Flickr

Finally managed to put together the tools needed for this wee project. I had hoped to get everything at the start of this week which would have left me a few days to try building but delivery times scuppered that idea.

At least I now have everything to play with. Quite excited. 😀

Best tip…LUBE YOUR NIPPLES.

Well lube the spoke hole on the rim and the spoke thread.

At least I now have everything to play with. Quite excited.

Have fun. Take your time. And if it’s not going right just back everything out and start again 🙂

I sat on the lounge floor to lace those ^^ up. 😀

Just remembered my last attempt at building a set of wheels sat on the kitchen floor with none of the right tools except a screwdriver and a spoke key. Had about two hours to build two wheels but as it was just a rim swap figured that would be plenty.

Took them to Whistler the very next day, managed three runs before every single spoke on the rear wheel seemed to loosen at the same time, resulted in some very sloppy steering 😀

Happy little moral to the story is that after limping home I then spent a more relaxed evening carefully re-tensioning the wheel and got plenty of useful life out of it after that, so even if you bugger it up first time it needen’t be a disaster!

Just bought the book and had a read/skim through.
Can anyone recommend a decent truing stand?

cheers

I’ve got the cheapest minoura one, TBH I wouldn’t recommend it, it’s good enough for occasional builds, but is a bit stiff/sloppy and you end up having to work round is flaws.

OTOH, cost £30 and it does the job better than trying to do it in the frame.

Whatever you get, get one that’ll adapt to different axle sizes (or always use the same brand of hubs and buy QR adapters for every hub).

I got the Rose bikes stand and dish gauge (here) for 40 quid. Not brilliant but does the job. Now I’ve done a few I’m tempted to get something a bit more substantial.

Tredz are doing the Park Tool home mechanic one for £70 instead of £100. Also, it popped up with a £5 voucher.
Anybody used or recommend this one?