Wheel Building
 

Yeah, this doesn't exactly belong here but...

Does anyone build wheels and use the "over, over, under, skip one" method?

I did that, and I ended up with the spokes crossing about 4" or so out from the hub on one side, and 8" or so out on the other side. I tore the whole wheel apart, did it again and got the same result. My wife was watching me get frustrated, she looked at it and made some comment... it was then I swapped some spokes to have come out to "over, over, under, first one" and it appears to have come out correctly.

Is this going to be bad?

I have no idea what your talking about!! I lace the hub first then the rim.

I'm trying to imagine what you did. Perhaps you got of your count when some of the spoke holes were filled.

The easiest thing is to do is to find a wheel with our desired lacing pattern and copy it.

Start at the valve if you want to box around the valve.

For a conventional cross-lace pattern, I install all of one side's heads-out spokes into alternate holes in the flange and bring these out to nipples installed at every fourth hole on the rim, making sure to use rim holes appropriate to that side of the wheel. (Most -- but not all -- are drilled in a zig-zag pattern.) Next I install the first heads-in spoke for that side and pull is across the opposing spokes so that it crosses over 2, 3, or 4 of them, depending on the pattern I am building. I cross under the last spoke, over all of the others, and I wind the hub appropriately. I then do the heads-out spokes on the other flange, being careful to match the positions on the first side. Your problem may be here -- look through the hub and identify two adjacent spokes, one from each hub flange. These must be parallel. If not, you are winding the spokes more on one side than on the other, which could give you the difference in cross point you note.

Oh boy, I've got a lot of learning to do!

Thank you all for responding!
I *think* it's the same as the front wheel now. I'm concerned that it appears right, but I didn't follow the instructions. Or the instructions were off for what I was doing.

I put the wheel on the frame to attempt to true it- at first, half the wheel pulled to the left- I set the wheel on the ground and pressed all around in both directions- now it seems the whole wheel is off to the left.

To be honest- I got farther than I thought I would- I think I'm going to take this into a shop to and stick them with un-****ing this.

I'm not sure I think I understand what you thought you said. Or something. Are you getting the intended 3x or 4x pattern on both sides? Or something? Be aware that the holes in the hub are not directly adjacent from one flange to the other. Get one flange's heads-out spokes laced up, then note the offset of the other flange's holes to the first. Of course, if you don't start right you can end up with the valve hole between spokes that aren't divergent.

Addendum: Do not take it to a shop. Many shops wouldn't touch it anyway. Go to Sheldon Brown and follow the instructions. It is easy and quite rewarding.

I'm not sure I understand your skip-pattern description. You have a choice of whether the head-out spokes are leading or trailing or whether both flanges are the same. (Various builders like one way or another. Jobst Brandt had a reasonable argument for one way but in the end argued that it didn't make much difference.) Anyway, if you do all the head-out spokes first and both flanges have them either all leading or all trailing then there is no cross-over to be done until you start with the head-in spokes.

The first wheel you build is the hardest. Once you figure it out, you'll have the pattern for all your other wheels. If it matches, it's probably OK.

There are several ways to lace wheels depending on which spokes are leading vs. trailing. I seem to recall that Jobst Brandt's book gives one way of lacing, but Sheldon Brown's website gives another way. The pro mechanics prefer a certain way depending on strength and spoke counts. For C&V 32/36h, it doesn't much matter.

(I'm pretty sure I dont want to do this)

This warning doesn't square with my experience. A good shop that I've been a semi-regular customer of has been perfectly amenable to taking a correctly-laced wheel build and doing the truing for me. While the truing is the artful part, the calculations for spoke length and assembly are the tedious/aggravating part; but when you're done, fairly rewarding. I agree with Jim's recommendation to follow Sheldon Brown's step-by-step instructions; the best linformation I've found (and not for lack of looking).

John E. is right. Following the Sheldon Brown instructions, once you get the first two rows of trailing spokes in on each side, the remaining 2 rows of spokes are "over, over, under, hole" just as you found out and your wife already knew. I had to build a rear wheel last night as I Raleigh I picked up had a bolt on rear hub. I mean really, no quick release? So I had an extra hub to use and built a wheel. I reveiwed the instructions because I can never remember from one wheel to the next. Just watch out that the left side hub spokes go to the left sided rim spoke holes and vice versa.

+1
a whole day doing my first pair, but i was fully prepeared to mess up(and i did). couldnt be happier with the finished product. truest wheels i`ve had, just because i put so much time into it.
you could always go radial though, super easy :D
do agree with the other guys that the most finicky part is identifying the correct holes to start on the hub.
good luck

My suggestion would be to see if your shop offers wheel building classes. I agree that Sheldon's page is very helpful, but had I not had some hands on experience first, I don't know if would have helped me. Wheel building is very satisfying, so don't give up, whatever you decide to do with this first one.

Darn every body beats me to the Sheldon Brown answer.

[MENTION=174646]The Golden Boy[/MENTION], what step are you stuck at now?

True enough. I wasn't talking so much about truing a wheel once it has been strung. My experience, limited admittedly, is that a shop won't touch a used rim. I assumed GB was re-stringing a wheel he had had for a while, and that he was wanting it to be string right instead of just trued.

About Jobst Brandt's preferred stringing, IIRC his only real point was that if the drive side had trailing spokes and they were rigged head-in then the increased tension of pedaling hard could cause the crossover point to shift to the outside slightly, reducing the clearance between spokes and RD cage. But he also said it was so small with a well-built wheel that it didn't make much difference.

When I built my first wheel I followed Sheldon Brown's instructions, laced and trued it carefully, then commuted on it for 1000 miles that summer. It is still on the Peugeot and still going strong. That's a good place to start and a good place to finish!

Keep in mind that there are several correct* ways to lace a wheel. Drive spokes with heads in, non-drive spokes with heads in and a combination of both.

* depends what you read.

You need a Yankee Screwdriver. Very cool too, every wheel builder should want one. Basically you can push, pull and the helix screw shaft extends, depending on the collet ring orientation you can wind or unwind a whole wheel very fast.
When building, you have to take care to know you have a good spoke length calculated and take the nipples up to the same spot, but if you build any amount of wheels... Necessary. I just value my time.

http://www.nickh.org/yankee/

You really need this: Wheelbuilding book for building bicycle wheels

I made my first 6 wheels or so using the instructions given by Jobst Brandt in The Wheel, lacing 4 "groups" of spokes to the rim. My wheel building class taught us the way Schwinn did it with all the spokes placed into the hub then going from there to lace to the rim.

Its complicated to explain in writing. Do you have a place you could take it or a friend who could look and advise you?

I'll second this. Musson includes just about everything you need to know to build a wheel with 0 prior experience.

FWIW, it has always struck me that the order of in which you run the spokes through the hub or to the rim doesn't make much difference, except for one thing. You do the head-out/spoke-in spokes first because you can't easily install a spoke-in spoke once anything else is strung to the rim. Beyond that, the differences of one approach to another are subtle conveniences. In the end you need to get them all rigged properly to their proper rim holes with the proper crossover and interlacing, and then you start tightening and truing. The only tricky part is making sure you start on the proper holes in the first place.

Hi Tom, I thought I had replied to you the other day- evidently I didn't.

I'm stuck at truing.

I think I'm going to take it in. For the amount of headache this has caused me, the amount of time I've spent on it- to do it properly I need new spokes (I was reusing spokes, more or less because I was sort of playing around to see if I could do it), so for the money- I called a shop- it's worth the $110 for a wheel build, spokes and nipples, rather than the $20 to look at it and whatever needs to be done to un-**** it.

I'm doing this wrong, and I've kind of lost confidence in myself and what I think I know.

Don't be discouraged. Wheel building may seem simple in theory, but missing one step can mess it up. Ask your mechanic if you can watch him rebuild it, or if there's a class the shop offers. Or bribe him with some beer for a lesson after hours.

Wheels are brutal to build. I feel ya.


That's all I got.

Ideally, the mechanic will identify where you made your error, and you can learn from it and come back better next time.