Introduction to Advanced Wheelbuilding
I am an autodidact wheelbuiler. Only after some years did I go to the DT Swiss Academy... Where I did learn quite useful stuff by the way. I live in Switzerland, it takes me 2 hours to get to the DT SWISS international center in Biel, where they invent all their products and build all their spokes for the world ! So yeah... It took me quite some times to go there, I like to learn on my own apparently...
It takes a lot of effort and research to learn wheelbuilding, there is no books, or center of references where everything is there and ready. I had to test, make mistakes, learn, try again, and again, search of confirmation on the internet...
So I decided that I wanted to share this knowledge. And as I fell in every trap several times... Maybe I could help you not to fall so often. So, there will be a number of chapters, about what I call "Advanced Wheelbuilding". I will not cover basic knowledge, you can find it in the book by Roger Musson "The Wheelbuilding Book". This book is brilliant, simple and complete and will help you to build a lot of wheels. But for a pro wheelbuilder, it does not cover everything.
I thought that advance stuffs could be organized in one place, and that would be here... I hope.
Roger Musson, mentionned before, have written a brilliant book on wheelbuilding. For motivated beginners it is simple and complete. It stays on my bench for everytime I have a doubt. Read it. His calculator is awesome and I use it all the time. I will refer to it every time you need basic knowledge.
https://www.wheelpro.co.uk
Ric Hjertberg from Wheel Fanatyk wrote a lot of blog posts. You will learn a lot by reading them. Take a look at his store, there is a lot of interesting stuff. Like the Morizumi spoke cutting and threading machine.
https://wheelfanatyk.com/
It takes a lot of effort and research to learn wheelbuilding, there is no books, or center of references where everything is there and ready. I had to test, make mistakes, learn, try again, and again, search of confirmation on the internet...
And as I like every wheel... I want to know everything about them ! From the heavy motor hub to the very light race wheel. I am a generalist. I love wheels.
When I want to the DT Swiss Academy, I noticed that they are good, very good ! But in the DT Swiss area of expertise. Which is broad... Yes. But do not cover everything there is. They will not teach you the little details that's change everything. Those tricks and experiments on lots of different wheels, from different brands, old, new, cheap or expensive, weird hubs or whatever crazy stuff engineers invented.
My customers comes with their spokes in one hand, the hub and rim in the other and tell me that two mecanics could not build it. It did not work. And indeed, this simple wheel is complicated, I had to tought to every details to get it right. It seems nothing in the end, but it a lot of knowledge and thinking there.
I thought that advance stuffs could be organized in one place, and that would be here... I hope.
This website is also for me a way of organizing my thoughts and write knowledge for myself... I am still new in the wheelbuilding world after all with only a hundred of wheels. But they were all very different. Every time I will learn something new I will put it here.
Finally, you will see that I write and publish directly. It will be a bit of a pain for you because chapters are not finished, or without illustration and written with my terrible frenglish. But it will slowly improve, and when a chapter will be satisfactory, I will ask my english speaking and inventive bike mecanic friend Alex to correct it. That's the way it is.
Now, there are some very good references that exists and helped me a lot :
Roger Musson, mentionned before, have written a brilliant book on wheelbuilding. For motivated beginners it is simple and complete. It stays on my bench for everytime I have a doubt. Read it. His calculator is awesome and I use it all the time. I will refer to it every time you need basic knowledge.
https://www.wheelpro.co.uk
Ric Hjertberg from Wheel Fanatyk wrote a lot of blog posts. You will learn a lot by reading them. Take a look at his store, there is a lot of interesting stuff. Like the Morizumi spoke cutting and threading machine.
https://wheelfanatyk.com/
Grin Technologies are nice if you are in motor hubs. Their spoke length calculator is good for the task, and they explain how to proceed in videos or on their website. They
have real experience of building motor hub.
https://ebikes.ca/tools/spoke-calc.html
Adrian Emilsen, from Melody Wheels and on Instagram, posts crazy in depth stuffs on wheels and tools. He is also a generalist wheelbuilder. Check his store, there is a lot of interesting details and explanations. No limit.
https://www.instagram.com/melodywheels/
Adrien Gontier from RAR did a lot of tests and comparison on race wheels in parallel of the development of its own parts and brand. I have still not read everything... Mostly in french, some in english.
http://www.rouesartisanales.com/