Once I've read that wheel building is something that is regarded as very respected quality of someone that practices in bike servicing, so I figured I'll give it a go.
About six months ago I've built myself my first pair of wheels. After consideration and reading some on-line material, talking to my friends at Pici-Bici (bicycle boutique, that offers quite a collection of fixed gear parts and can basically get you almost anything that other local shops just don't have in their repertoire) Son Archetype (anodized black).
Hubs: Miche Pista high flange (black)
Spokes: DT Swiss Competition (2.0-1.8-2.0)
I've picked up this parts, because I like to get my money's worth. I always look at price - performance factor when I'm buying stuff. Well, most of the times.
Rims - pretty light for their rigidity, very nice finish and high quality manufacturing. It's a joy working with good quality rims, where you cant even see nor feel the joint(which is welded) on the opposite site of the valve.
Hubs- according to Andrej, owner of pici-bici, they offer solid performance for the money and after 6 months of abuse(sun, rain, dust, mud, gravel) and 6.000 km they show no sign of wear.
Spokes- nothing special, although I could mention that they came with alu nipples(included in price) and are cheaper as well known Sapim counterparts.
As I've needed some of the basic tools to start off, I found a full "startup" kit for me, consisting of:
-Wheel truing stand: Minoura FT1 (portable truing stand), which I got for better part of 60 euros
-Dishing tool: another Minoura part, FCG 310, around 15 euros
-Nipple wrench - Unior 1630/2A - 2.5 euros
-Spoke tension tool (since I have no feeling to start off I figured that if I can measure spoke tension, I would not make something that would not perform) - Parktool TM1, which I got for around 40 euros.
All the tools needed for building a wheelset
As you can see, tools cost me roughly around 120 euros. They are pretty basic stuff, but good enough.
Before ordering the parts, I have read quite a lot of Internet's how-toos: found some youtube videos about how to build a wheel, went to read some articles from Sheldon Brown (a guy that I respect deeply) and look what other companies were selling as complete wheel-sets.
Front: radial 24 spokes, enough for my ~75 kg of weight.
Rear: 2 cross with 28 spokes, just to be on a safe side.
Front was the first, since you cant really make a mistake- each spoke goes directly to it's hole, it does not matter where you start and where you finish.
Material for first wheelset
First: pop some spokes in
Then insert them in center of the rim, put every spoke into every second hole, put some oil on the thread (as advised by many master wheelbuilders) and screw the nipples on- just a few twists.
Now repeat the same step on the other side.
Now pop that onto the truing wheel and start tighten everything up. For best results and rapid wheelbiulding it is very important to do it gradually and evenly.
First you can tighten everything so you can see only 2-3 threads above each nipple on each spoke.
Then, find a nice reference point- valve hole is the best option and start to slowly turn those nipples up. Yeah, it sounds dirty. Now do a lap of turning each nipple a few times- but every one the same, say 5 times. Repeat this step until you can feel spokes becoming a bit less wobbly.
After a while, you can feel the tension building up. You can get excited. Don't worry, it's "normal". Check for roundness first, worry about side-to side adjustment later.
Checking, measure, check again, turn the nipple, stress relieve, check, make correnction, write down, check, make change, stress relieve, measure, write down...
As you can see from the picture, I've used chain oil to put something on the threads. Any oil will do, I just had this with me.
What is that and what is it used for? Well, if you don't there is no actual damage that will happen because of that, but it means extra work for you. What is happening when you tension the spokes is that there is some buildup of twist on the spoke and sometimes spoke is not seated into spoke hole on the flange(hub) and/or nipple is not properly seated in the rim. This could effect in rapid deterioration of roundness and side-to side play of the rim after first use on the road, even if it looked perfect when on truing stand.
With stress relieving you are seating the spokes into the right place and relieve any twisted built up tension on the spokes which occurs when you are screwing the nipple. With bladed spokes that is usually not as bad, as you have to hold the spoke in place, but you can clearly see the twist on that kind of spokes, while on round spoke that is almost impossible to notice.
How do you do it? Well there are a lot of methods, but I usually put the wheel on the floor, place a hub or hubs quick release on something soft- a rug, piece of card board... not to scratch anything, grab the rim on 9 and 3 o clock and press on it like I would like to bend it. Repeat this at least one full rotation, so you bend it on every part. Then flip it over and repeat on the other side. You should hear spokes popping and making some sounds. When you press and hear nothing more, that is usually enough.
Initially you should really see how the rim bends, but when there is more and more tension on the spokes, the wheel gives in less and less.
NOTE: Radial laced wheels bend a lot less than crossed ones- that is because spokes that you try to add some stress to are at 90 degrees angle from center of the hub and are therefore stronger that way, but the rim should be bent to some extent. Just don't put your whole weight on the rim when you are doing this, you want just to stress relieve, not bend it and make it useless. Also, Sheldon Brown has some other tricks that you might find useful - see section "Initial spoke adjustment" and "Seating and Stress-Relieving the Spokes".
After a while, when I was satisfied, I decided it was time to finally put some rubber on.
As geekish as I am, I even put the data into a program called Wheelwright, which is available on the internetz. You need a working linux distribution or make yourself one on virtual software(I've used linux mint with Virtual Box, which was laying around on my laptop).
Wheelwright- gui tool which works with TP1
It can put those figures into perspective. And makes something nice to see.
That is it for now, more about building rear wheel in next post.
To the wheelbuilding part 2
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