Wheelbuilding / Wheel Building / Wheel build help

http://www.sheldonbrown.com/wheelbuild.html
Here's a good place to start.

Get Jobst Brandt's The Bicycle Wheel. Job done. :-)

How many spokes, how tight is your budget, what sort of rim weight / width? :)

Re starting:
Put valve spokes first, leading spokes go towards rotation direction & you can see their spoke head,
Leading goes in first
3 spokes between each spoke
count the crosses in your head when spoking

Probably all very well explained but those are the things I fecked up last times so maybe these help you a bit :)

Can anyone recommend a hub with the following criteria (I could sacrifice some of the latter) please?

1. Below £70
   
2. Rear 135mm
   
3. Disc compatible (preferably centreloc)
   
4. 36-hole
   
5. Cartridge bearings
   
6. Steel free hub body (or at least one that doesn't gouge)
   
7. steel axle
   
   

I've failed to find anything that satisfies all criteria - there seem to be very few 36h hubs anymore. It's for loaded touring, potentially 6+ months of continuous use. If I can't find anything I guess I'll just get a Shimano cup n cone. Any advice on which to choose would be appreciated (I heard so rumours that some XT ones for example are really shit for touring).

Dcr are doing touring disk hubs.

http://dcrwheels.co.uk

Go for xt.

At that sort of price point I would say stick to using XT. Only other option is Novatec, as far as I'm aware, and that wouldn't tick all the boxes for you.

Spa cycles and sjs are touring specialists perhaps worth paying a little more and order via their advice?

spokes - 28/32
budget - spend what I need to on rims and spokes, got hubs here from old wheels I'll probably re-use (DA 7700) Budget is more of an issue for equipment as I don't fancy spending a lot on kit I probably won't use very often, I'm wondering what the most basic set up I can get away with is really or if cheap equipment will suck the enjoyment out of it all and end up with poor results. When I built the bmx wheels as a kid I just did it in the bike, what's the general opinion on that?
rims - Had previous good experience with CXP 23, 33, open pro, velocity a23. Haven't been very impressed by entry level factory campag (scirrocco), miche or fulcrum in the past.
light if poss, suited to climbing and general road use, I'm about 62kg (before xmas) and don't race or tend to abuse equipment.

Withered preacher - Thanks, had a look at sheldon, he's quite realistic in his approach I got the sense that sticking with something fairly conventional and nothing too exotic is the general advice there.

t_w - thanks, amazon have it for around £20, pity there's no 'look inside' preview facility on amazon. I imagine there's a lot more advanced info in there than I'll need or what you reckon, suitable for beginner? I'm tempted to see how I go with Sheldon in the first instance.

No probs. I think investing in actually purchasing his book is best but there are numerous scanned PDFs available on the net for nothing.
Brandt's book covers everything from basic wheel building to the engineering principles underpinning the construction of the wheel so I would always recommend it in just about every wheel building advice context. :-)

pity there's no 'look inside' preview facility

Now that Jobst is dead, I don't feel too bad about letting you know that it's pretty easy to find his book as a free pdf download. He deserved every penny he made from it, since it was our bible back then and remains a solid grounding in the principles of tensioned-wire wheels.

Dr disc brake hubs are the same logo less novatec hubs I sell.

XT hubs are fine for touring. The m756 steel axled hubs are still available. These are perfect for tourist.

Rims if you just want hard as nuts, sjs sells unfancy but reliable kit. Cheaper rims may have a protrusion near seam but unless they're mega cheap shouldn't fail. Mavic A519 are very good, Le 100 kg Manfriend uses them, but I don't know if successor is as good :)

Rigida is an old touring fav. See what sjs uses for their wheels to get an idea :)

In a frame is OK, just a little more hassle as no comfy table to sit behind ^=^

Imho I think it depends on your personality some love and need all details, some get confused by too much theory and need to do first, then learn the why.

Sheldon confused me, Le Manfriend taught me his tricks.

As long as pattern & tension are correct. Jobst is a great read though :)

Thanks for the advice - I'll probably end up getting XT and taking some cone spanners with me. I really prefer cartridge bearings but that criterion seems to jack the price up and/or move the designs toward an emphasis on lightweight.

Jobst's book is indeed excellent and gives a great understanding about how spoked wheels work. The best lacing instructions I've found though are Zinn's, specifically in his book Zinn and the Art of Mountain Bike Maintenance. The instructions are very easy to follow and become intuitive. They're also very good when it comes to disk vs rim braked builds, and different cross figures.

Properly adjust them when you get them (they always come a little tight from the factory) and they'll be just as good and last just as long as sealed bearings and be easier to sort out in the unlikely event of something going wrong.

@danwentskiing Surely Phil Wood make a hub that fits your description? Apart from the £70 bit.

XT hubs do need setting up properly when you pull then out of the box. do that and they wont need adjusting again until you service them.

Rigida sputnik is the heaviest and most robust touring rim there is. cheap to.

My 'look inside' comment probably looks a bit snide in hindsight, I was more referring to 'looking inside' to gauge whether the content was too advanced before buying a copy.

Got a couple of leads now thanks to you guys, tempted to try Zinn because I like the title. Don't feel so bad about just getting stuck in on the frame with the basics now aswell. Posted the same q on retro bike and the consensus was unless I'm going into full scale production then the frame would be fine, got a good tip about hanging it rather than upside downing a whole bike.

With regards to rims, will probably stick with rims I've ridden in the past, however a bit put off using my 7700 hubs now which are 28/28. A few people have advised to use 36 for the first attempts. Think I'm going to respace an old freewheel hub and build a singe speed rear for the first attempt then I'll maybe build up to a dished wheel next time round.

Thanks for the advice so far, I'll update the thread with some results soon hopefully.

36H for first attempt rubbish what you have is easy to build up. For your first built you could pick the H Plus son archetype rims. They are a doodle to built with. Stiff round and flat. Mavic Open Pro's in contrast are much harder to get right.

Basic tools means you will need lots of patience but on your first build you will need lots of patience anyway. Good luck have a box of patience and you will be fine.

A few people have advised to use 36 for the first attempts.

You'll probably have read on this thread plenty of suggestions that people start with a 32H build, but 28 is close enough. The smaller the spoke count, the less tolerance you have on the spoke tension; that's why people don't usually start out with one of these:

crumbs I didn't think such a thing existed, what happens if a spoke breaks? or is there so much rim it doesn't make a difference.

@thecycleclinic is that Malcolm? I don't expect you to remember me but I bought some wheels off you a few years ago you built with velocity A23 rims. I was actually looking on your site to see if you still stock them as they did me very well (still going). I saw the H Plus son archetype rims which I assume have replaced them and thought I might give them a try. What makes Open pro a difficult rim to build with out of interest, don't know why but I imagined that being a good rim for a beginner.
I had an old boy locally build me some wheels with cxp33s a few years ago and he didn't stop complaining about them, saying that they're going to fail or crack, after approx 1-200 miles I took them to the lbs and they overhauled them as half the spokes completely loosened off. In contrast I got the same lbs to build me another set with cxp33s (exactly the same with old hope glide hubs) and years later they still feel really good with no attention at all.

Come to think of it now, the above mentioned local old boy wheel builder turned out to be a bit of a fraud. He built me some touring wheels as well and I later noticed that he must have miscalculated buying the spokes as he put an 's bend' in one to bring it down to length. I'm no expert but that doesn't seem to me to be quality workmanship.
I saw him in the bank a few months later and he avoided eye contact which is always suspicious.

I've got Musson s book. How does it compare to Jobsts?

For the casual home builder, is it worth having both for reference or is one preferred over the other?