I’ve got a cheap minoura one (identical to the Rose one above by the looks of it) and it suffices but isn’t very good. When I get a few hours I’m going to build the one that Musson provides the plans for in his book – which looks better than most of the commercially available ones, and very cheap to build. I also built a dishing gauge from his book, and a nipple driver of my own design that is ok for the occasional build but not as easy to use as a proper one.

I’ve got the X-Tools truing stand from CRC. Very substantial and well made.

I’ve bought the other tools needed instead of making them, purely because of convenience and time constraints.

Need to head to the office now to pick up the dishing tool and new hub… 🙂

Can anyone suggest what spokes to use please (or even where I should shop for them)? I need 16x288mm and 16x292mm, ideally in black. The only ones I’ve found so far are:

http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/dt-swiss-aero-speed-black-wheel-spokes-18-pack/rp-prod141727

I can use these but am not keen on the fact that they are really for road racing and/XC. I’m a bit of a unit at 100kg and I’m quite hamfisted on the trails so I’d like strong spokes if poss.

Oh, what does double-butted mean? 😳

Ta. 🙂

Double butted… thick at the ends, thin in the middle.

Depends on what you’re building really. If it’s just for a trail bike build then DT Competition for all rounder wheels, DT Revolutions for lighter builds. I got mine recently from CRC. Good prices often found on the German sites too.

If you aren’t buying from LBS then ACI from cyclebasket are hard to beat

mrblobby – Member

Double butted… thick at the ends, thin in the middle.

If it’s just for an XC build then DT Competition for all rounder wheels, Revolutions for lighter builds. I got mine recently from CRC.

Thanks for clearing that up. 🙂

My wheels will mainly be used on Surrey Hill trails so lots of roots, a few jumps and drops.

Sofabear – should you do the Bike Kitchen course I can say it well worth it. I did it this time last year and have built a few wheels since (with the Musson book as back up) and all have not killed me and remained true, even after a week in Peebles, the ‘Ardrock and a week in the Alps (plus many Surrey trips). The Bike Kitchen provide much tea too 🙂

This best bit about building your own wheels is when you lace up the rim and get ot all true only to realise the pump doesn’t fit on the valve due to a bit of a cock up re lacing.

Fit the home builder, apart from the cost, the advantage of the roger mission diy wheel jig is that you go on ‘relative’ measurments. You need a dishing tool and in the end I bought a proper one but then the rest of the straight/round measurments are done by eye. This then means as long as the wheel spins (doesn’t even need to be perfectly aligned with the stand itself although it helps if it is fairly straight in the stand) then you can have it just hanging in the ‘dropouts’ with an Allen key or skewer rather than tying yourself in knots with fittings or adapters for different hub spacings and axle ‘standards’. His book explains this far better than I can, but it also means I have easily built up on all sorts of hubs including 150×12 rear and maverick front hubs, and only something as big as 29er rim with a tyre still on doesn’t fit in it if you want a quick spin to check if it’s the rim or the tyre that’s wobbly.

As above, if you start with a new straight rim and the spokes ‘in tune’ (I ping them early in the build for even starting tensions) then follow careful tension-true-stress relief cycles, the spokes will end up very evenly tensioned at the end. Pinging them for pitch as you do the intermittent trying is a good way to keep them that way: if a spoke you want to tighten is already higher pitch than its same-side neighbours then consider loosening the opposite side adjacent spokes too.

Other top tip as well as oiling spoke threads and nipple beds/eyelets (up cycle your used fork oil for this job) is to put a drop in between where spokes cross each other. Less pinging and easier to ‘stress relieve’ compared to clean but dry spokes.