Yes, I know how to build and true bicycle wheels.
I would guess most bicyclists today seldom go beyond oiling a chain and changing a tire. Growing up in a family of boys (and 1 sister) with a Dad who was a mechanic/welder/farmer/heavy equipment operator, you learned early that you always fixed it yourself first (or at least tried to). And while I didn’t have the aptitude for cars and trucks that my dad and a few of my brothers had, once I I was hooked on riding bikes, I was soon hooked on working on them. Building on all that early experience, and my years in bicycle retail, I don’t mind taking on just about any bicycle repair. Over the last 3 years, I have even been learning the finer points of disc brakes that are now on our 3 newest bikes.
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| Ready to get started. |
And every few years, the opportunity comes along to build another bike wheel. When I started riding, hand-built wheels were in the same league as a hand-built frame, the benchmark of quality and reliability. And while today’s machine built wheels are incredibly reliable, I still enjoy the satisfaction of lacing and finishing a wheel for one of my bikes when the need arises.
The spoked bicycle wheel is beautiful piece of engineering. Your hub is actually hanging from the top of the wheel, while the tension on the other spokes works to keep the hub centered in the rim, and the rim true and round. One of my favorite descriptions is that bicycle wheel is round suspension bridge! A wheel’s spokes can be laced in a variety of patterns, depending on the intended usage, and what you decide in trade-off’s of weight, performance and reliability.
While a radial spoke wheel has spoke going straight from hub to rim, very common on front wheels today, most wheels have a pattern that incorporate spoke crossing over and under each between the hub and rim. A 2-cross pattern goes over 1 spoke and under the second, a 3 cross goes over two and under the third and so on (and my reference to knitting). You must also start the spokes correctly in the rim; the eyelets are offset in the rim, to match with the side of the hub, and you want be sure you don’t have spokes crossing over the valve opening, which can make inflating the tire a challenge.
Once a wheel is laced, the final tension on hand-built wheel used to be more of an art, the proper tension achieved through practice and experience; simply building more wheels and seeing how they held up. However, when it is years between wheel sets, some of that “touch” is sure to be lost. And has the design and materials have changed, past experience may not be as useful. However, time gathered skills can now be aided by tension gauges and software that allow you to measure and compare the tension of each spoke. I started using the Park Spoke tension gauge and wheel building apps a few years ago, first to repair wheels, and now to build them, and it is an amazing resource.
My first interest in wheel building came about after a challenging couple of days of riding with broken spokes. I had purchased my second road bike in the summer of 1974, just in time for my first double century and in anticipation of my first extended tour, DALMAC. I was on DALMAC, with probably less than a 1,000 miles on the new bike, when a spoke in the rear wheel broke late in the third day. In camp that night I found the mechanics truck, and he was able to replace the spoke and true up the wheel. I assumed it was just a one off, and I would be fine. (I didn’t expect to be like the tandem on DALMAC that year, that was breaking 5-6 spokes per day, but that is another story!)
I started the next day only mildly concerned. It was a century day, and would end with biking across the Mackinac Bridge. At 70 miles, I heard a ping, and a spoke had broken. It was crossed under another and not causing an issue. But then at 80 miles, another ping. This spoke I had remove, because it was hitting the back of the freewheel. I loosened the rear brake a bit, and continued, trying to ride “softly”. By the time I reached the pullout for the bridge, 6 (out of 36) spokes were gone, the rear brakes was disconnected, and the tire was barely clearing the frame. And that is how I crossed the Mackinac Bridge the first time, gingerly riding “light” and hoping my rear wheel would make the remaining 8 miles across the bridge and to St. Ignace High School.
After returning home, I made the trip to the bike shop, and they rebuilt the wheel for me. This was my first lesson in the art of wheel building. The spokes used by the manufacturer were smaller than hub was designed for, and the spoke heads were failing at the hub flange. The shop re-built wheel with a the correct diameter, or gauge, spoke for the hub, and the wheel worked for many years after. And from the point forward, I worked to learn everything I could about repairing and building wheels.
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| After lacing comes the finishing. |
I started with adding spoke wrenches, I then picked up a copy of Robert Wright’s Building Bicycle Wheels. As part of a bike upgrade, I bought a set of Phil Wood hubs, then I ordered rims, and the correct length and gauge spokes, and over a week of winter nights, I laced my first set of bicycle wheels while Matt Assenmacher was building my custom touring bike. A more experienced friend helped me with the final truing, and then the were road ready. I used that the first set of wheels for almost 10 years, before rebuilding them again with a more modern rim. That set is still on the Assenmacher, probably 10,000 miles later.
I started the working in bike shops a year later, and was building wheels more frequently, probably 5-6 wheels a year, when a special request would come in, and if the regular wheel builder wasn’t available. The most challenging wheels I did build were the 5-cross, 48 spoke tandem wheels of the 80’s.
Along way I picked up the intricacies of selecting the spoke gauge and cross patterns, the lacing order and tricks of when to use lube or Loctite on eyelets and spokes. The final step in truing was stressing the wheel; wearing a pair of leather work gloves, you worked around the wheel, grasping each the parallel pairs and squeezing so that and twists in spoke is relieved. When it is done right, the wheel is silent on the first ride, as every spoke is seated and ready to share the load.
My latest wheel, built this past winter, was for the rear wheel my Trek 920. An errant strap during an after dark commute had resulted in broken a spoke I had repaired a couple of years ago, so that wheel was no longer factory true. And while cleaning my 920 last fall, I found another broken spoke, as I prepared to replace that spoke I found a crack in the rim at the eyelet of the bad spoke. The wheel then had over 8,500 miles, and over half those miles had been with my regular work commute load (laptop, lunch and clothes) along with 10 days of self-supported camp touring, so all things considered, including that errant strap, it was not bad run for a rear wheel. Thankfully, despite the COVID bike and components shortages, the replacement rim was readily available from Trek. After few weeks to gather the rim and and spokes, the new wheel went together in a couple of nights, first lacing the original hub into the new rim, and then truing it into a finished wheel. The new spokes are stainless steel rather than black spokes, and I already have ridden it for couple of hundred miles since it was installed.
Two of my bike now roll on wheels I have built, and the same tools are used to keep my other wheels round and true. So while the tools have changed, the satisfaction of the results remain. While a dozen different technologies are responsible for the component parts, the final product is still handcrafted.
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