Yo!

How come everyone thinks handbuilt wheels are superior to machine built?

ADSR

Anecdotal evidence aside, they are generally better tensioned and stress relieved, plus a good wheel builder can compensate for small inconsistencies in the rim, spokes and hubs.

elTwitcho

Mostly because they are.

In my experience the machine built wheels I'd ridden hadn't been stress relieved for **** and came out of true before I'd even finished riding my bike home. This is an extreme example but is something that would never happen on a hand built set of wheels by a competent builder

ilikebikes

'cause people with money to throw away say they are.

ADSR

I would take exception to that, since when I got mine I had no money to speak of save for the cash I got from selling off a bunch of music equipment. Seemed like a worthy investment, ya know?

noisebeam

A good machine builds better than an average human.

mander

Have you got any evidence for this? You didn't just make it up did you?

Humans are better than machines at stress relieving, watching out for spoke wind-up, making sure spoke tension is both uniform and at a level that's appropriate for the rim, and balancing uniform tension against vertical and lateral trueness.

You have to practice if you want to build wheels fast, but it isn't rocket science. I am way below average as a wheelbuilder; I've only built four sets and would never get hired to do it at a shop. But, my wheels stay true because I put enough time into getting them right. I would venture to say they're much better than a random machine built set.

noisebeam

Only personal experience. My two sets of machine built wheels (Bontrager Select and Alex DA22) never had any issues and as far as I know they were never reworked at shops before being sold. One set (Alex DA2) has 18k miles on it and remains as true as new. My three sets of handbuilt (rear only, Open Sport and Open Pro x2) wheels have gone out of true for no known reason, had loose spokes, had spokes pull out of rim all within 3-5k miles. The shop that built them has top rep in the area, although I don't know specifics about the builders themselves, I can only assume they are at least average or they should be to work at this shop.

But yes, I was being a bit off hand and casual in my statement - it is subjective in terms of what 'good' and 'average' mean.

Yo!

You see I posted this because if I took one set of machine built wheels and mixed them up with a few sets I hand built, you'll never notice a difference.

Of course I'll have skeptics chime in about my experience as a wheel builder, so just to clarify, I've probably built around 20 sets; MTB SS, MTB geared, Road SS, and Road geared, and BMX (20"-24"), and all but exotic lace patterns, all the way up to a 48h hub. I always follow the basics of lubing non-radial laced spokes, relieving spoke wind up, and stress relieving.

Personally I feel like the hours I spend building/lacing/truing a set of wheels produces similar results to any machine built set. All this hand building stuff may be true when it comes to stress relieving and tensioning, but otherwise I think that the advantages are minimal, and anyone saying that all their problems are solved with a hand built set doesn't really know what they're talking ab. A machine can dial in much more accurately than the human eyeball and a truing caliper.

Retro Grouch 

How about compareing a good machine to a good human and an average machine to an average human?

I don't have very much experience with high dollar wheelsets. I have a bunch of experience with run-of-the-mill sets. Cheap prebuilt wheels suck until they are retensioned and redished by a human.

mihlbach

Thats basically it. There's nothing magical about handbuilt wheels and its possible for a builder to produce a ****ty pair of wheels. A good wheelbuilder can fine tune a pair of machine built wheels and produce a wheelset that has all the qualities of a pair of handbuilts.

yokotas13

Big difference?
I can get the hub, rim, spoke combining wan much easier goingto a local builder

mander

Sure, sorry for my crankiness.

Retro Grouch 

On the other hand, I build my own wheels and I have the capability of buying my parts at wholesale prices. The cheapest way I can buy a set of Ultegra hubs, Open Pro rims and DT Competition spokes is to buy a prebuilt wheelset from one of the on-line retailers.

roastbeef

i've heard a lot of people buying machine build wheels, then taking them in to have them properly tensioned by hand.

mihlbach

In addition to build quality, another plus of custom wheels that can't be matched with a stock machine built wheel is the ability to customize the wheel to your own personal body weight and riding needs. You pick the rim, the spokes, the hubs, the spoke count, lacing pattern, etc. to achieve a wheelset that is best for you. Stock machine-built wheels are not build for your specific needs.

hairnet

We take comfort in knowing a person build something as important as the wheel, maybe.

Sixty Fiver

If your best effort produces a wheel that is equal to a machine built wheel you need to improve your wheel building skills.

Send me a mixed set of wheels and I will be able to tell you the difference between the machine built wheel and the hand built wheel.

A great deal of the wheel work I do is tuning off the peg wheel sets for people because theirs and my own my experience with these has not been stellar... they are often poorly tensioned and have not been de-stressed and sometimes won't make it around the block without going out of true.

Once they have been tuned they can be excellent wheels and it can save a person a little money over the cost of custom wheels.

The people who come to me to have wheels built usually have a little more money to spend (it does cost more) but more than this want wheels they can depend on for thousands upon thousands of miles.

Three of my friends went touring last summer and 2 of them had me either tune or build up a set of wheels from scratch while the third thought his new bike and factory wheels were up to the task... he declined my offer to check his wheels.

The first two guys completed the tour and have gone to take longer tours on the same wheels (which have not needed to see a spoke wrench since they were built) while the third friend had to cut his first tour short because of epic wheel failure.

There's a 245 pound guy doing 6 and 8 foot drops on a set of mtb wheels I built for him and these have never needed any servicing either.

I have yet to experience a wheel failure on any wheel I have built for myself or anyone else.

I service a lot of wheels that I didn't build or tune...

Exit.

I think noisebeam has it right. Machines build mediocre wheels, and people build anything from great wheels to horrible wheels. While it's true that a good wheelbuilder can build better than a machine, it's also true that a machine will build better wheels than someone who is new at wheelbuilding and/or doesn't know what they're doing. There's no inherent magic to a handbuilt wheel.

Sixty Fiver

There is no magic... just skill and experience.

Although it does not hurt to make regular offerings to the bike gods.

dayvan cowboy

another advantage to hand built wheels is that if something goes wrong, you can go back to the shop/wheelbuilder who built them. you can't go into a factory and talk to the machine about it.

noisebeam

^^^ not necessarily true. Trek will replace a wheel if it does or starts to break usually with no hard questions asked if it wasn't obviously abused. A hand built wheel may come with a list of excuses as to why it was not the builders fault.

the_don

So the moral of the story is to buy machine built, but learn to tension them yourself or take them to a wheelbuilder who can do it.

adriano 

how come some people dont think njs means a frame is almighty?

jim-bob

Why would I have a machine build my wheels when I have perfectly good hands?