Building your own wheels

pprendeville

Does anyone know whether it's a difficult thing to biuild your own wheels or would it end up more expensive to buy the gear required (quick search reveals I'd probably need a spoke wrench, truing stand and dish stick)? Or am I better off just buying what's available? I like the idea of being able to build my own wheels and not relying on others knowledge in this area when making a recommendation. Was looking at the sheldonbrown website and by the sounds of it he says 32 spokes minimum on rear wheel.

Was sitting down last night in from of computer and heard this almighty snap. Didn't have a clue what it was but knew it came from my bike as it was beside me (keeping an eye on it to make sure it was behaving itself). Had a look see and saw that one of the rear spokes had caused the noise. It was broken

I've only recently invested in a floor pump. Previously I was only using a small BBB hand pump and I rekon I was only pumping tyres up to a max 80psi. I've gone to the recommended 100psi since getting the floor pump. This would hardly have caused the spoke to snap would it?

Brought wheel it into Rothar today to get it fixed (couldn't get through to local bike shop on the phone). Said they'd have it done within the hour. However when I went back they said a few more spokes had snapped when they tried replaicing the original. What gives? Is it difficult to replace a spoke on ones own?

abcdggs

pprendeville wrote: »

Does anyone know whether it's a difficult thing to biuild your own wheels or would it end up more expensive to buy the gear required (quick search reveals I'd probably need a spoke wrench, truing stand and dish stick)? Or am I better off just buying what's available? I like the idea of being able to build my own wheels and not relying on others knowledge in this area when making a recommendation. Was looking at the sheldonbrown website and by the sounds of it he says 32 spokes minimum on rear wheel.

Was sitting down last night in from of computer and heard this almighty snap. Didn't have a clue what it was but knew it came from my bike as it was beside me (keeping an eye on it to make sure it was behaving itself). Had a look see and saw that one of the rear spokes had caused the noise. It was broken

I've only recently invested in a floor pump. Previously I was only using a small BBB hand pump and I rekon I was only pumping tyres up to a max 80psi. I've gone to the recommended 100psi since getting the floor pump. This would hardly have caused the spoke to snap would it?

Brought wheel it into Rothar today to get it fixed (couldn't get through to local bike shop on the phone). Said they'd have it done within the hour. However when I went back they said a few more spokes had snapped when they tried replaicing the original. What gives? Is it difficult to replace a spoke on ones own?

It's very possible the other spokes were already damaged and it was this that caused the first spoke to break, replacing a spoke is very simple so i think it's unlikely that the other spokes breaking was down to the mechanic.
Replacing a spoke is very different to building a wheel from scratch and i would advise against it unless you have time and aren't depending on your wheel building skills to get you anywhere should the worst happen.

kumate_champ07

how exactly did the spokes snap, what part of them actually broke?
did the chain come in to contact with the spokes at some stage and jam/lock up the rear wheel?

I started building wheels about a year ago, Ive built at least 14 now so the equipment cost has paid for itself at this stage, it all depends on how often youre actually gonna use the tools/build wheels. once its built well the wheel shouldnt need any adjustment again for a long time

I built some wheels using the bike frame and fork dropouts and they came out well, its more awkward but you can still get the job done

I have a dishing tool but you can get by without one.

Diarmuid

Kumate; did you build the wheels without a spoke tensionmeter? That seems to be the most expensive item,

levitronix

Dont know you could do it without a tensionmeter, i rebuilt my powertap wheel recently and theres no way i could get the tension by listening to the spokes ping, even when the tension is really close the spokes give off a differnet sound and 120kgf feels just the same as 90kgf when you pluck the spokes

I know wheels can be built without the tensionmeter but it must be hard

kumate_champ07

If I was building low spoke carbon race wheels Id get a tensionmeter, not the park tools cheap one, the DT Swiss tool that costs around 400euro.

the park tools tensionmeter costs about 40euro in America but 80euro here I think, had a friend who could bring one back for me but decided its not needed.

I pluck the spokes like harp strings but some rims arent perfectly round to begin with, theres a conversion chart somewhere that lists notes for perfect tension depending on spoke count.

kumate_champ07

Im a bit of a sound designer/audio engineer so that helps!

pprendeville

kumate_champ07 wrote: »

how exactly did the spokes snap, what part of them actually broke?
did the chain come in to contact with the spokes at some stage and jam/lock up the rear wheel?

I started building wheels about a year ago, Ive built at least 14 now so the equipment cost has paid for itself at this stage, it all depends on how often youre actually gonna use the tools/build wheels. once its built well the wheel shouldnt need any adjustment again for a long time

I built some wheels using the bike frame and fork dropouts and they came out well, its more awkward but you can still get the job done

I have a dishing tool but you can get by without one.

you're bang on. i actually had a crash 2 weeks ago. knocked the derailleur out of line. managed to get home and just as i came in the drive way i shifted into first and derailleur got caught in spokes and basically made bits of itself. even managed to snap the chain guard. never thought about it til you mentioned it that it could have been the reason the spokes went.

know what you mean in terms of equipment paying itself back but i suppose you'd want to be using it regularly. i'd hardly be but still would like to be able to build them myself. will look into cost of it and decide then.

you must have a good ear for music. can't say the same for myself unfortunately.

doozerie

I've been building my own wheels for several years. I bought myself a decent truing stand early on, but while it makes my life easier it isn't essential. For the first few years I relied on ear to get the spoke tension right, and it mostly worked out fine. Every now and again I'd play around with the tension a bit with a new wheel just to see if the tension/sound I'd been using for previous wheels could be improved upon - I had one incident of a wheel basically deconstructing itself during my commute as every spoke worked itself loose as the spoke tension was too low, and several incidents of rims eventually cracking at the spoke holes as the spoke tension was too high (though I've read of people deliberately tensioning spokes to the level of causing fine cracks like those - it wasn't clear to me whether they were claiming this was the "right" thing to do or not though).

I eventually bought a tensiometer (the Park Tool one) to see whether it would make my life easier. The answer is a qualified "maybe". Unless you know what the spoke tension should be, a tensiometer doesn't help - it helps you verify that spokes are a similar tension to those around them, but that is of limited use. It can be very difficult to find the recommended spoke tension for the particular combination of hub, rim, and spokes that you are using. I find these days that I still rely on ear to get the spokes into the right range of tension (and it is a range, it's not that you have to hit an exact figure), and I use the tensiometer to compare spokes that should be of the same/similar tension. So the tensiometer is more of a means of double-checking rather than anything else, for me.

I should say though that I continue to buy pre-built wheels for my road bike. Part of the reason for that is that I've only ever built crossing-three wheels, never any radially spoked wheels (or any of the many other variations). Almost all of my commute wheels for the last ten years or more have been ones I've built myself, so wheel building for me has been a very utilitarian exercise. While it has been satisfying and saved me a lot of money (e.g. I've been re-using one hub for 20 years now!), I'm a bit bored of crossing-three wheels so I opt for something different and more interesting for my "good" bike(s) by buying factory-built wheels. The build of none of my factory built wheels has proven to be noticeably better than my own efforts though, for what it's worth, which if it means anything just suggests that anyone can turn their hand to wheel building and produce good quality results. If I had more spare time I'd play around with different spoke configurations and build a wider variety of wheels but until then the money I save on my commuter wheels will fund fancier wheels for my other bikes.

You can make your own truing stand and dishing tools, of course.This guide says it gives instructions on that in addition to instructions on building wheels. I've not bought the guide myself so I've no idea what it's really like. If the instructions on building the tools are any good though, then it would pay for itself several times over.

Mr. Skeffington

Best to use a tensiometer IMO, other tools are as mentioned above.

There are 2 really good books you should check out:

Wheelbuilding - Roger Musson
The Bicycle Wheel - Jobst Brandt

Give it a go but perhaps dismantle an old wheel and re-build before you build up a more expensive one. Once you have built a wheel you should be able to remove buckles and replace spokes etc with no problems.

Best of luck

happytramp

Apparently Rothar will be running a wheelbuilding course at some stage although when I popped in a couple of weeks ago they said they weren't sure when. I think it's €40 for the day.

kayaksurfbum

Wheres the best place to buy the bits? hubs, spokes and rims?

Holyboy

Mr. Skeffington wrote: »

Best to use a tensiometer IMO, other tools are as mentioned above.

There are 2 really good books you should check out:

Wheelbuilding - Roger Musson
The Bicycle Wheel - Jobst Brandt

Give it a go but perhaps dismantle an old wheel and re-build before you build up a more expensive one. Once you have built a wheel you should be able to remove buckles and replace spokes etc with no problems.

Best of luck

Both books are great, I like to go back and read them every now and again, but I don't think you can learn to build a wheel from a book, it's more trial and error, people build wheels in different ways, I build mine strangely as I lace up one complete side first but it's how I like to do it, I never think it's a good idea to dismantle a wheel and try to re-build it though, rims that have been tensioned, un-tensioned and then re-tensioned can act very odd indeed!!
As for tools all you really need is a good spoke key and a bike, it's a bit more difficult to dish, true and check for up and down but if you're not in a hurry then it'll be fine, the only thing I'll say is it's really easy to build a wheel but it's very hard to build a good wheel.