Wheelbuilding / Wheel Building / Wheel build help

I think 304 (aka 18/8) can suffer SCC, but the conditions on a bicycle wheel don't appear to be severe enough to make it a problem. Cl^- seems to be the culprit, destroying the passivation layer, but only when there is insufficient oxygen to maintain it. Probably a problem for things which are constantly immersed in a chloride solution, but not so much for something which dries out in the air most of the time.

AL6XN is stronger than 304 and almost completely impervious to corrosion for NaCl solutions, I wonder how much it costs to make spokes & nipples from it :-)

weight + cost?

weight + cost?

Were both addressed in my opening salvo

Stainless steel is lighter than brass, the slower cutting might push the cost up in spite of the cheaper material, but we'd be talking less than a pound for a wheelset if somebody set up to make stainless nipples on the same scale as brass ones are currently manufactured.

I'm planning a wheelbuild for my commuter, I want it to be bombproof and cheap. I went for the cheapest sealed bearing hubs and the cheapest (moderately) wide rims I could find. Currently this is the plan:

Novatec Track hubs 32h €38 on Aliexpress
Mavic A119's 2x€19,95 at a local shop
DT Swiss Champion 100 for €29,95 at the same shop

That totals just shy of €110, I don't have any wheel-building tools and it's my first time building a wheel so I'll lace them myself and have the shop true them.Thoughts?

And according to Spocalc the spokes should be 291,7 on the rear and 292,3 on the front when laced 3 cross. Should I err on the long side or go for 292mm spokes?

Err on the short side for spokes, but you should be OK with 292 all round if your calculations are right. Avoid DT Champs or other plain gauge spokes, they are a false economy. Rosebikes will sell you DT Comps for €6.80/20 or €0.38 ea. plus nipples at €2.00/40, so 64 will be under €35 including postage. Depending on whether your shop was including nipples or not (probably not, in boxes of 100), that's either cheaper than your LBS or a major upgrade for only €5

Are you really getting Novatecs for €38 on Aliexpress, or is there shipping and tax to add to that? Planet-X have 32H Novatecs for €36.44 in black or €54.67 in silver, already in the EU with VAT paid.

Nipples are included in the €30, 100 Comps with nipples would be €48. What's the advantage of double butted over plain gauge besides weight? There's a 62 gram weight difference with 64 spokes, I'm not too fussed about that on a 2kg wheelset.

I looked at the Planet X hubs but they have a matte rear and glossy front (or the other way round) in black and I'd prefer silver. Shipping is included in the €38 and I've never had to pay tax on sub €100 things (knocks on wood). I'm not in a rush so I'll wait and get the color I want for slightly cheaper as well.

What's the advantage of double butted over plain gauge besides weight?

Has this question never been answered in over 100 pages? Wow, wheelbuilding thread, I am disappoint! Oh well, there's always google with nearly 750,000 results, albeit polluted by alarming amounts of misinformation. For best results, let's quote Jobst Brandt:

*Spokes are in pure tension at midspan where they do not need to resist bending,
so they can be swaged thinner there without sacrificing strength. Swaged spokes
are made by drawing regular spoke wire through a reducing die. After swaging,
the unreduced ends are formed the same way as unswaged spokes. The diameter
reduction increases spoke elasticity, increases strength by work hardening, and
reduces weight. However, the most valuable contribution of swaging is that peak
stresses are absorbed in the straight midsection rather than concentrated in the
threads and elbow, thereby substantially reducing fatigue failures. Swaged
spokes act like strain screws commonly used in high-performance machinery.*

Where he says "swage" he is talking about the process which results in the spoke becoming butted. That's partly a matter of 1970s American usage, and partly Jobst being a production engineer rather than a mere consumer, so he concerns himself with how something is made rather than what comes out at the end.

Owning a copy of "The Bicycle Wheel" should be a qualifying requirement to participate in this thread, since it would be only 10 pages long if all the questions which are already answered by Jobst were not posed here :-)

Sapim race are you other option for spokes. Given you are in the E.U they should not be too hard to find and may be cheaper.

Lacing takes 15 minutes. You can't just true a wheel that has been laced. It needs tensioneing, the tesnions evened out, dish correctting maybe, stress releiving then final truing. If all you are going to do is lacing save ypur self the bother and just ask the shop to the whole job you will save yourself 1/4 of the labour cost. Also if you mess up the lacing and the shop has to relace your bill goes up. Wheel building is the whole process if you are going to do do all of it, you be surprised what you can achieve with minimal tools and patience.

If all you are going to do is lacing save ypur self the bother and just ask the shop to the whole job

This also has the advantage that they will charge for 64 spokes rather than selling you a box of 100 :-)

Makes sense, thanks! Looks like an interesting read, I'll get on that after asking my last question for now. :)

DT Comp or Sapim Race? It'll cost the same (although I'd have 16 spares of the Comps and none of the Sapim's) and weigh approximately the same, anything else to compare them by? Googling doesn't help either, all I found out is that they both do an adequate job at connecting a rim to a hub.

And I figured I'd just get started and see where I can't go any further. I reckon I should get up until the final truing because I don't have a tensiometer. Using my front fork and a piece of card board to center should be fine from what I gathered.

DT Comp or Sapim Race?...they both do an adequate job at connecting a rim to a hub.

You've answered your own question there.

heh

Tensionmeter isn't really needed if you are careful.

Comparative tension is easy to judge acoustically, absolute tension can be gauged that way too as long as you know what note to listen for. With undished 32 spoke wheels there's a pretty wide range between too tight and too loose for most people anyway.

I'm tone deaf, but have done fine so far by comparing thightness of squezed spokes to an old good wheel with similar spoke gauge.

I have seen many wheels handbuilt that have come in the shop. most have tension way too low. I suspect they have been built without a tension guage. 1200N DS rear is what is needed, how do you know what that is without a tension guage. Length change the note so unless your ear is tuned to a tollerance of a hew hertz a tension meter is very useful to guage absolute tension. Getting tension to within +/-5% of the average for one side is hard without a tension gauge again you need a very musical ear. higher spoke count wheels are actually very forgiving which is why dron above has sucess. His tension may vary a bit than what I do but the wheel will probably last well. It the lower spoke count wheels that suffer quickly if poorly tensioned. Still if you are building wheels £60 spent on the PArk Tool TM-1 to guage relative tension is money well spent. To gauge absolute tension take away 10% from the tension suggested by the chart on a sapim race or DT comp to get you in the ball park.

I don't give much for the TM-1 absolute tension measurements.
For relative tension it's really nice to use though.

Length change the note so unless your ear is tuned to a tollerance of a hew hertz a tension meter is very useful to guage absolute tension. Getting tension to within +/-5% of the average for one side is hard without a tension gauge again you need a very musical ear

We've covered this before. It's fairly easy to calculate the correct frequency from length + diameter + density + tension, include Young's modulus if you're concerned about the last fraction of Hz but it's not necessary because bicycle spokes are so thin so you can effectively disregard their bending stiffness. Generating the correct note from a soft synth is something anybody with enough computing power to read a web forum can do. The relative notes need to be about a quarter tone or less for spokes of the same kind, which is an interval most people can gauge pretty easily. There's even an app for iOs users :-)

Not really a wheelbuilding question but ...
Thanks for reminding me about these @miro_o :

There is an option for durable ceramic coated rims in these @Skülly

sjscycles.co.uk/rigida-grizzl­y-700c-(622)-touring-rim-with-css-side-w­all-black-prod18886/

I've not owned them but know a few people who have been super happy with them.>

There is an option for durable ceramic coated rims in these @Skülly

sjscycles.co.uk/rigida-grizzl­y-700c-(622)-touring-rim-with-css-side-w­all-black-prod18886/

I've not owned them but know a few people who have been super happy with them.

I only wish they had, like the legendary Open Pro Ceramics, made them beautiful. The black ano on the top of the rim is ugly as hell (I'm pretty much allergic to that shiny black ano that lots of modern bike parts are 'decorated' with). Why don't they ano the rest of the rim a similar grey to the CSS!? So annoying.

But I'm intrigued your later response to ScillySuffolk quoting SJS telling us you can only use V Brakes on them ...

Actually most of them are on cantis or mini vs but Koolstop make some inserts for road.

So am I right in saying that some of those Kool Stops can be used on road calipers? Which ones? Sorry if seeming stupid! I always find brake blocks a bit of a minefield since BRAKSAREDEATH.

OH OK I actually looked at the Koolstop site properly.

Also looked around on CTC at people's experiences with CSS Grizzlies. Think I'd prefer to stick with double eyelets.

You mean this.

http://poehali.net/attach/BicycleWheel-_Jobst_Brandt.pdf

Going to give it a read and have a go as well. Have some scrap junk wheels in the back I want to re-build from scratch to learn.

Following up on earlier suggestions...

Didn't get round to buying hubs. Now having further thoughts, and reading too many mtb-r and STW threads.

Novatec 771/772: 440g, about £95 @thecycleclinic
Shimano XT M785: 500g, £60 @ Wiggle
Shimano XTR M985: 400ish, £lots
Hope Pro 2 Evo: 490g, £176 @ Wiggle, plus adapters because they're listing 15mm/qr sets and I need qr/qr.

Someone remind me why I didn't just buy XT ages ago?

You mean this.

No, I mean buy the damn book and give Jobst the royalties he so richly deserves :-)