Lessons in wheelbuilding

I managed to find some time to tension up the spokes on my laced-up wheels. Some things went really well and other things didn’t go so well. I began working on the front wheel. Job Brandt said in his book that one way to get initial even spoke tension is to tighten the spokes so that the top of the spoke is flush with the top of the nipple in the rim. Thinking that my spokes were too long, I wouldn’t have any problems. It turns out that the spokes were probably just right and they put some serious tension on the rim! The nipples were straining the spoke holes. After playing with the tensions to true the rim, some of the spoke holes look like they are going to burst and the nipple will shoot out of the rim!

The spokes are tensioned too high and they are busting through the rim.

I know, I know… totally my fault. I should have been paying more attention to the rim as I was adding tension. Too late now. I think the rim is ruined. It wasn’t a total waste since I still managed to get the wheel fairly true. There’s a little bit of radial and lateral bobble but it’s probably less than 1mm. I stretched on a Tufo tubular (with difficultly) and pumped it up so the tire can stretch. It was late in the evening when I finished. I was almost expecting to see the wheel taco’ed in the morning from having a spoke shoot out of the rim. Everything held and the wheel is still in one piece. I wouldn’t feel comfortable riding it though.

The next day I got to work on the rear wheel and this time I was much more conservative with adding tension. I left at least four threads free in the nipple to get my initial spoke tension. Then I slowly added more tension until it was true. I worked on two pairs of spokes at a time, tightening one pair on one side and loosening the other pair on the other side. Using a spoke tensiometer, I made sure I wasn’t going overboard.

Speaking of the tensiometer, I can actually fit my spoke wrench and the tensiometer on the spoke at the same time.

The spoke wrench and tensiometer can fit on the spoke at the same time.

I can screw the nipple and watch the tension change in real time. It was really neat. I decided to fine tune my spoke tension like this in the beginning and I got each spoke to be the exact same tension. Unfortunately, the wheel ended up being as round as an egg and as true as a curvy road. Very weird!

So I got to work on truing the rim. I did get a very true wheel but it’s not perfect. There were problems along the rim joint and even at the lower tension the rim buldges at every nipple. It was somewhat disappointing since I was hoping for better.

I think I poorly matched the rims and spokes here. Either the spokes need to be a lighter gauge or the rims need to be beefier. I’m going to try to rebuild these wheels with different rims and spokes. Maybe this time I’ll get nicer double butted spokes and use beefier rims with eyelets in the spoke holes. Practice makes perfect and I hope this next build will go better.