Wheel building

[Lordfauntleroy]

Hello all.
Starting this thread because I find it very difficult to find information on wheel building, especially with straight pull spokes, and practically nothing building with carbon spokes. A lot of people have built bikes from parts. Having never even owned a bicycle of any kind I build up a lightcarbon lcg071. I am a pharmacist, so have practically no mechanical skills or experience, but I found it easy enough. Very fiddly, very frustrating, and it took ages, maybe 4 full days between everything. However it was very rewarding, as I'm sure people on this forum can appreciate, and now I could literally fix anything/replace anything on my bike myself.
With this in mind, I am wondering why people don't seem to build wheels. I have a broken spoke, which I'm off to fix now after waiting an age for the supplier to replace, I'll let you know how I got on.
I feel like it's something that with some patience and practice is quite easily achievable to the type of people who build a bike, or is this naive? Any body have any resources to get started?

[Tijoe]

did you try searching the internet on "Bicycle wheelbuilding books"?   All of the major publications are for sale.   Regarding straight pull and carbon spokes (berd spokes)  The principles how you build the wheel is the same, but the hubs are different.

If you already broke a spoke on your wheel, this means that you didn't have the spoke tension even on all of your spokes.   (Did you use a spoke tension meter?)
( Sound tuning spokes works great too, but you need to develop this skill over time.)

Many people build their own wheels.  It isn't worth building your own wheels unless you are willing to spend a fair amount of money on all of the required tools,
or you plan to build many wheels over time to serve your own bicycle building addiction.

FYI, experienced wheel builders take about 20 minutes to lace up a wheel,  another 10 to 20 minutes to bring the spokes up to initial tension, and between 20 minutes to an hour to tension and true the wheel, depending on the rim type and if the wheels has a welded seam or uses an insert at the seam.    Today's carbon rims are so good that I can build and true a complete wheel in less than an hour. 
   

[plocnik]

did you try searching the internet on "Bicycle wheelbuilding books"?   All of the major publications are for sale.   Regarding straight pull and carbon spokes (berd spokes)  The principles how you build the wheel is the same, but the hubs are different.

If you already broke a spoke on your wheel, this means that you didn't have the spoke tension even on all of your spokes.   (Did you use a spoke tension meter?)
( Sound tuning spokes works great too, but you need to develop this skill over time.)

Many people build their own wheels.  It isn't worth building your own wheels unless you are willing to spend a fair amount of money on all of the required tools,
or you plan to build many wheels over time to serve your own bicycle building addiction.

FYI, experienced wheel builders take about 20 minutes to lace up a wheel,  another 10 to 20 minutes to bring the spokes up to initial tension, and between 20 minutes to an hour to tension and true the wheel, depending on the rim type and if the wheels has a welded seam or uses an insert at the seam.    Today's carbon rims are so good that I can build and true a complete wheel in less than an hour. 
 

That's the way to go about it. Though, carbon spokes and Berd spokes (polymer) are different things.

[CycOps]

In  the past is was not unusual for competitive cyclists to build their own wheels, as did my dad for the whole family when my sister and I where racing in the 80s, and who passed the craft on to me.
Today, with a huge amount of wheels manufactureres and a high competition between them, building your own wheels isn't nessecary cheaper than buying a whole wheel set.
That said, for us who still build their own wheels, it's a matter of the joy of the craft and (at least for me) tradition.
So there's good reasons to get into it. IMHO a self build isn't a self build if you didn't build the wheels.
If you want to get into it, check

- Roger Musson, Practical guide to wheel building, downloadable on his website for a fee, the book contains plans to build all neccesary tools, expect nipple spocket

- Sheldon Brown website, with full tutorial

[CycOps]

Forgot to mention, straight pull wheels are more easy to lace as you stick all the spokes in the spoke holes and all spokes have the right postion. Check youtube. With j-bend spoke wheels, you have to take care that the lacing/crossings arer right, and for beginners this is prone to mistakes.

[zealot128]

Forgot to mention, straight pull wheels are more easy to lace as you stick all the spokes in the spoke holes and all spokes have the right postion. Check youtube. With j-bend spoke wheels, you have to take care that the lacing/crossings arer right, and for beginners this is prone to mistakes.

Yeah i also noticed this, Straight Pull is like easy-mode of wheel-building. But straight-pull: this is a little problem I had when researching the whole thing, even though I used books (library!, bought one) used videos. but like 85% is for j-bend old-type wheels and focus like mostly on spoke patterns. If you need to measure spoke length yourself, all the guides do not work good IME. Many spoke calculators out there assume j-bend spokes and you would be several mm off. But all our new Shiny Carbon Rims from China are all straight pull as far as I saw.
Also the books and guides, and calculators had almost no recommendation about Spoke tension that I found in a SI unit kg/F, in some rare cases the scale tension meter thingy from Park-Tools. It was much more try-and-error for me to get my XMCS rims + hubs to one piece of bike-part (But after 1500km now still true, no broke spoke, sound of the spokes appears very very similar).
In the end, i didn't find one real good, up-2-date guide for building up Carbon Rims in 2025 with a Non-Park-Tool tension meter. If someone has one, please share! Also if you have like a Spider-Chart where i can enter all kg/f (not park tool scale) of a wheel, ofc i can use my own excel, but wtf.

Sumary: I also enjoyed building up the wheels myself, as the last part of the whole bike building experience - besides welding my own steel frame, BUT i wouldn't do it again, as the time use was frankly enormous compared to just picking a build-up wheelset from our favourite Xiamen brands.

[CycOps]

Best free of charge spoke calculator is SPOKOMAT
https://radtechnik.2ix.de/spokomat.php
Gives you everything you need no matter straightpull jbend radial or how many crossings you want

[Stubbie Blue]

Yeah the first time I built a wheel was on an e-bike hub motor and it was a great learning experience. Dropped a nipple inside the rim and it took me a while to get it out, so get a good nipple holder. The round metal nipple wrenches for multiple gauges tend to scratch the spokes so I now use one with a plastic coating. I use an $8 Toopre spoke tension meter which often requires conversions for aero spokes not in the table which is a pain. I used the Grin Tech spoke calculator which is geared towards hub motors. https://ebikes.ca/resources/web-tools/spoke-calc.html

Later on I rebuilt the hub motor into a carbon wheel with Pillar PSR Aero 1423 J-bend spokes, and built a new front carbon wheel with a Goldix R240 SL straight pull hub and Pillar Wing 20 spokes. Straight pull spokes need to be held against twisting so get the right sized tool for this. For straight pull spoke lengths, I used https://spokecalc.io/ . I got wheels with asymmetric 2.8 mm offset spoke holes, which gets you more even L/R spoke tensions e.g. 39/61% vs 32/68% with 0 offset for my rear hub motor.

The front wheel weights and costs were:

432g CarbonBeam 50mm deep carbon wheel $138
80g Goldix R240 SL hub $46
108g Pillar Wing 20 spokes $59
26g Sapim Polyax brass nipples $7
= 646g, $250

This is about the same as an EliteWheels Edge 50mm carbon wheel set that I have: 632g (F), 1362g (F+R set) $608. So you don't really save much money I'm afraid. For the weights, I found that most of the weight savings actually came from the hub and spokes, and not the carbon rim.