Wheel building

[Walker]

I know there are a lot of RRB-ers out there building or re-building wheels for their bikes. I sat down last night and laced up a pair for my Ladies Bike in the Challenge section. I'm sure not everyone has access to a truing stand or a spoke tension tool and although you can get away without a truing stand if you are creative, having proper spoke tension is a bit harder to work around. I'm not aware of any way to cheat this tool other than using your own judgement.

One thing you can do to ensure that your wheels will hold together is buy some Wheelsmith Spoke Prep. This suff goes on the spoke threads and is like really light duty thread lock to keep your spokes from loosening up. In my opinion this is a must do step. As a wheel rotates or as you come off that jump the rim can (will) deform slightly. The spokes are constantly undergoing changes in tension as this happens causing the spokes to loosen up over time.

Another thing to consider is interlacing the spokes as this will add significantly to the strength of your wheels. Seems most older bikes the spokes are just laid over each other. When building an interlaced wheel, your second and forth set of spokes pass over two and under a third spoke. Even in the case of re-lacing up a wheel that has been disassembled for painting this can easily be done.

 

[hubgearfreak]

I'm not aware of any way to cheat this tool other than using your own judgement.

http://www.bikexprt.com/bicycle/tension.htm

 

[Pinche]

To make your own truing stand you could actually use an old frame and fork. If you could squeeze a rear wheel into the fork then just drill a hole on each side and run a nut and bolt to go off of for truing. Just uses a good trued wheel to setup your bolts first. You could actually make a few for different width rims and take one of the nuts onto the bolt.