Why build my own wheels?

So why go to all the trouble of…

- Building my own wheels?
- Sourcing hard-to-find components?
- Making complex calculations to get the correct spoke length?
- Risking screwing it all up and wasting both time and money?

… when it’s possible to buy a “perfectly acceptable” pair of wheels from the discount mail order merchants that cost less than the sum of the component RRPs? And, moreover, why blog the process and in so doing risk associating myself with all the whining self-indulgent morons whom one usually finds in the blogosphere?

One question at a time. Why build them myself? Firstly, and paraphrasing Sir Robin Knox Johnston when asked why he sailed solo non-stop around the world: Because I bloody well want to. Secondly, because I reckon I can do it: cheaper than a pro build from a decent LBS; and to a better standard than the mail order shops.

I’ve owned a fair few bikes over the past twenty years or so, mostly hardtail mountain bikes and most of which I’ve built myself from scratch. The absence of any glaring cock-ups in that period means that I consider myself to be a competent amateur bike mechanic and, with the sole exception of servicing the insides of suspension components, I do all my own spanner work and always have done so (my forks get sent via http://www.cyclesurgery.com/ to http://www.tftunedshox.com/, in case you care!). Wheels are a logical extension to this, and a couple of years ago I toyed with building a pair with what I thought at the time were reasonable results (I’ll expand on this later). So I’m pretty sure I can do it.

With the exception of those two past trial runs, my wheels had come either with off the peg bikes, from discount mail order giants (http://www.merlincycles.co.uk/ and http://www.chainreactioncycles.co.uk/) or were odd wheels from a variety of LBSes (Richmond Cycles, Bike Plus and Cycle Surgery). It’s fair to say that my experience of these is mixed, ranging from the very good (Bike Plus & Cycle Surgery), to the okay (Merlin, Richmond Cycles, Chain Reaction) to the bloody awful (ALL the off the peg wheels and Chain Reaction again).

So the only really well built wheels have come from high quality LBSes, but this drives the cost up considerably over the build-it-down-to-a-price online merchants. I get the impression that these latter outfits have maybe one decent wheel-builder, several half-trained spanner monkeys and a huge order list. Therefore it’s pot luck as to the competency of the person who builds the wheels and no matter who does it the business model precludes any of them from spending sufficient time on the finer points of the build. The quality & consistency of the product suffers as a consequence. I’ll brook no discussion on this point and I don’t care what the paid-up sycophants in the cycling press say in their reviews! A glowing review by people whose wages are paid by your advertising expenditure isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. By comparison and speaking relatively, I’ve got stacks of time on my hands and I only need to build a couple of pairs of wheels, and so my goal is to build some LBS-quality wheels at or below mail order prices!

And why blog the whole show? Simply because the definitive guide to wheel building has yet to be written. Not for a moment am I suggesting that I’ll be the one to write it, but I’ve read three separate guides (Brown, Musson & Schraner; Brandt is seemingly impossible to get hold of), all of which have significant shortcomings and all contradict one another to some extent. This means that I’m far from clear in my own mind as to the best method for building a wheel. I hope that by describing my experience and posing the questions that this raises in a blog format, and assuming that anyone actually reads all this, that I’ll get the answers I need and also that anyone else giving wheel building a bash can maybe join in and draw on my experiences. So don’t be afraid of having your say!