FBinNY 

+1

Consider painting (art not walls). Just about anyone can paint by numbers (do they still sell these kits). Over time, or with some training many will be able to paint on their own. But that still doesn't make great artists.

Much of the skill in wheelbuilding isn't in the basics of lacing and truing, but in the choosing of the right mix of components to build quality wheels suited to the purpose. Which spokes and rims for a heavy rider, loaded touring, track sprinting, and other conditions.

Also, if you move to lighter rims, you'll find that they can be harder to build. lastly, building fresh is usually easier than aligning where you have to correct for all sorts of things you wouldn't run into with new stuff.

Ask anyone who's been doing it for years and they'll confirm that it used to be more difficult in the past, when brand new rims weren't perfectly round, and had things like twists (one side higher in areas) that needed to be corrected. There was even a tool made to untwist rims, something that's disappeared since there's no need anymore.

frankenmike 

IME the major deciding factor is how good you are at truing wheels. Lacing them up isn't difficult.

jack002

Building wheels very badly is easy to do, building them into a 'passable' level wheel is doable, building them into a perfect well balanced wheel suitable for racing is really hard.

himespau 

My plan for this winter (has been delayed for various reasons - mainly didn't realize how much energy my baby would take from me) is to build a wheelset for myself (as the rear wheel size isn't available for purchase anywhere. So I bought the stuff to do that (and still plan to). When time came around to getting things together to build a bike for my wife, I could get a complete wheelset (machinebuilt, but retensioned by hand - though by a vendor with a reputation for having the rim sticker backwards out of the machine) for slightly less than the cost to me of rims and hubs. That's not including the cost of spokes or my time. I took that deal in a heartbeat.

I figure once I get the wheels built up finally for my bike, I'll ride them for a while. If they stay true, good. If they need a retruing, I'll take them in to the shop.

Al1943

+1 Lacing is the easy part.

Nick Bain

Ok I have to brag, I built my first wheel when I was 10. It was a steel rim I switched out with a better steel rim on a murray. the rim had an extra ridge in it so the spokes were too long but it still lasted forever.

Reeses

I took apart and built up an unusable rear wheel (rim dented) just for the learning experience. It was relatively easy, although I had never even touched upon the craft of wheelbuilding. I found Sheldon Brown's Wheelbuilding article really helpful. Basically if you can follow directions as to where all the individual spokes are supposed to go, you'll be fine.

Now I haven't ridden on the wheel I rebuilt because it's dented, but I'm pretty sure it's rideable, not of professional quality, but rideable.

reddog3

How do you get good? Maybe experience and practice? The OP and anyone else can get there if they have a little understanding and mechanical ability.

Really hard? For some it might be more challenging but given that one has some mechanical ability, some understanding of the process, and enough experience from doin' it, there ain't nothing "hard" about it.

jyl

Just to follow on - what tools does a begineer need to build a wheel?

I imagine an experienced wheel builder could make do with just an upside down bike fork. But if you're a newbie, what should you have on hand that will make it as easy as possible to end up with a good wheel, without over complicating the process?

Monster Pete

The most important tool is a spoke wrench. Whenever I've built wheels, I've trued them in the frame of the bike they're going on. Rim brakes can be used to set the lateral trueing- turn the wheel until it rubs, correct it, repeat until the wheel spins freely, move the brake pads closer together and repeat. For roundness you can use a ruler tied to the frame with a rubber band. A steel rule, magnetised, would work great if using a steel frame.

jolly_ross

I can build 3x wheels - so it can't be hard. Building them *fast* for commercial purposes is hard - but this is not what you're trying to do.

Improve the worst lateral problem spot a little, then the worst radial, then the worst tension outside tolerance - round and round the three. Stay with very small adjustments - be patient.

Even your first wheel will be better than a cheap one from your LBS. Post a pic when it's done.

frankenmike 

[QUOTE=reddog3;13853654]How do you get good? Maybe experience and practice? The OP and anyone else can get there if they have a little understanding and mechanical ability.

Experience and practice definitely hone the skills, and make one faster at performing the task. Confidence and working to a standard are other pieces of the puzzle. I was shown how to true wheels by a master mechanic, Steinar Smith, and learned how to lace from Sheldon's tutorial. As far as the standard, when building my own wheels 1mm is good enough, but when building for customers .5mm or less.

cbchess

Print Sheldon brown's wheelbuilding article out in COLOR and go slow. do all the tips. use a punch to set the spoke heads. stress relieve the spokes as you go. I use and old wooden hammer handle, Sheldon used to use and old crank arm. lube the nipples. make sure you budget enought time for each step with out having to get up and leave the room.

Its not hard and its fun!

himespau 

Hope to not derail the thread, but what do you use to lube your nipples? I have a variety of grades of lubricant. Thin (Boesheild), moderate (Chain-L), and thick (Park Polylube).

FBinNY 

Grease on nipples serves 3 purposes. 1- to lubricate the thread and thereby reduce spoke twist. This is more important with thinner spokes than with 2.0 straight gauge. I often build with 1.6mm spokes and without a decent lube they twist like crazy.

Prevent water from wicking in, and prevent corrosion which can seize threads making service later more difficult if not impossible

Prevent loosening with vibration. Though this should never be a factor on properly tightened wheels, it can be for left side rear spokes.

Virtually anything will serve the purpose adequately, and everyone has his favorite. Mine is a heavy duty, but sticky grease made by LPS and intended as a corrosion barrier more than as a lube. It does a great job preventing twist and you couldn't shake a nipple off a spoke with a paint mixer.

BTW- for those building non-eyelet rims the most important place to grease isn't the nipple, but the sides of the drilled hole. This is the Achilles heel of rims which are drilled after anodizing. Water carries salt and other corrosives into the gap between the nipple and rim leaving it there where it can attack the bare aluminum. Early on it'll swell making nipples impossible to turn, later it continues and will lead to premature stress cracking of the rims.

bikepro

I agree -- Sheldon's article is very good. Building a wheel is not difficult, but as a beginner, you need to follow the instructions to the letter -- and have a lot of patience. You might also get a spoke tension meter from Park. It takes some of the guess work out of the final tensioning and truing.

cbchess

I use Phil's tenacious oil (a thicker oil like Chain-L) in a small cup and put all my nipples in that as I build. I take each spoke and fill the threads with a high quality grease like Park or Phil's. Some people like linseed oil on the threads and others like spoke prep.

FBinNY 

I make Chain-L and would love to see it used this way, but it sounds awfully messy. What happens when you drop those slippery babies. The Grease is plenty, soaking the nipples is oil is also OK but messy. Doing both is like bearing a belt and suspenders,

himespau 

Nice visual

mechBgon

Another suggestion, and this may be redundant advice if it's already covered in the resources mentioned:

after initial lacing, you begin adding tension to the spokes. Typically, people use some arbitrary starting point (running the nipple down to the last thread, or turning it X number of times) and continue evenly adding tension from there. Long before you're to the point where you can get a meaningful reading on a tensiometer, you'll find some spokes have more tension than others. Why? Because reality.

I suggest balancing that out while the wheel's still quite soft, and revisiting it as you go. Initially, you can look at the radial true to reveal spokes that are considerably tighter than their neighbors, lateral true may do so as well. Plucking the spokes and listening to their tone begins to work as the tension comes up further. So given a healthy rim, you work towards true & round while steadily evening out tension, at least to the point where the rim's inherent imperfections begin to force a compromise. But I think it's desirable to get it fairly well sorted out as early as possible.

lostarchitect 

I am not a pro at wheelbuilding, I've built 4 sets of wheels, if you include the ones I built last weekend with a friend. I built the first wheel, and he watched and assisted. He built the 2nd one, with me watching and assisting. This was his first wheel ever, and until very recently he'd never even lubed a bike chain. So is wheelbuilding super hard? No. It takes patience and care. If you have fancy equipment like a stand and tension meter (I don't, I have an old fork with some zip ties, a spoke wrench, and a ground down screwdriver for a nipple driver--that's it) it will be faster and easier. But it's still very possible without the fancy stuff--I think if you start out without it you might learn a few things you would miss otherwise.

mconlonx

You need patience and time. Twice as much time as you think.

jjhabbs 

Built over 1000 sets of wheels during my career and went to school at two different places to do it in years past. Once your spokes are in the right place the rest is an art.

Pulling up, tensioning your spokes and making sure the wheel is true, dished correctly and not out of round takes time and practice.

Years ago we charged between 8 and 20 to true a wheel. If someone tried to true it before I did we charged extra!

Captain Blight

It's just counting by 4s, really. The further into it you go the easier it gets. Oh, and I use boiled linseed oil for a nipple compound. Lubricates when you drive the nipple on, and slowly hardens into a threadlocker. Pretty magic, really, and cheap to boot. I figured it out once, it was about $.04 worth per wheel.

SortaGrey

Being able to assemble and tension a wheel and making it look easy is mostly experience. Call is craftsmanship if you want.. but art.. not by many stone throws.. a few 450' homers.. throw in a couple 3 irons struck with the wind on a short cut fare way that roll for seemingly two days.. you get the idea.

Yet the newcomer to building.. after spending many hrs getting a wheel rideable.. might well see those LBS charges as very reasonable. All across the board.

What I term a high end wheel build.. starts of course with new components. Price tags aren't always indicative of quality either. You assemble in precise steps.. same all around. Getting a good rim true early on is simplicity itself.. ROUND and balanced with near equal tension per each side. Dish it.. bring up the tension again in precise uniform turns.. it falls into place so easily if you let it.

Now.. getting the 'not so good' rims decent is another chapter. Often created early on tensioning.. too tight in a couple spokes means what one guy so aptly described around here... as going "all wonky". The extreme of this is the waves... upping tension only means more waves and a mess. What most newcomers.. me included back then.. do is struggle with that jungle of counter acting stresses. Simply detension to the decree this disappears.. can be as little as 1/4 turn on each.. could be half a turn. From their your adding/subtracting tension with a move... IF the sides are of relatively even tension.. for their side. BEST thing often is to walk away for awhile.. come back fresh. Much easier then...

Truing the banged up.. 'been there and done that' rim is the challenge. This is how I learned.... I enjoy that challenge. Sorta like the dating game.. back when anyway. Yet it made working with new components very simple. It gets at times complex.. making said sows ear into the silk purse. Those finished products see all the salt and sand and cold of the winter. And have never let me down.