This is the first wheelset I’ve ever built, and it’s been going strong since February ’10.  My main goal was to lose weight over the EighthInch Tessa wheelset that came with my bike, while keeping within a reasonable budget and building wheels that would last for a few years.

The first wheel–the front–took about 4 hours of work, plus an additional hour after I took it to the bike shop and discovered the spokes weren’t tensioned high enough.  The rear wheel took just under two hours from start to finish, and all the spokes were tensioned right the first time.  Pure luck, but I’ll take what I can get.

I put about 50 miles or so on them in the first couple rides, then trued them a second time, had tension double-checked, and haven’t really messed with them much sense.  They even survived the horrible streets of Brooklyn and Manhattan for a week, and never went out of true.

Although  primarily built them to lose rotating weight, I ended up with an unexpected benefit:  smoothness.  The Tessas have extremely heavy rims and straight-gauge spokes, and I never realized they were the cause of so much harshness when rolling down the road.  This new wheelset has lighter (flexier) rims and double-butted spokes, and the combination of the two parts working together got rid of so much harshness that I could barely believe it.

Full Specs:

Rims:  SunRingle Assault 700c
Hubs:  All-City Track Hubs, 100mm front, 120mm fixed/free rear
Nipples:  DT Swiss Alloy, 2.0x12mm
Spokes:  DT Swiss Revolution, 294mm (f), 293mm (r)

Completed weight without rim strip:  833g (front), 853g (rear).  The EighthInch Tessa wheels (w/ rim strip) were 1237g (f) and 1305g (r), for a total weight savings of 1.8lbs!!

Open in Flickr

Of course, I didn’t just build my first set of wheels without first learning how to do it, and I wouldn’t suggest anyone else attempt it without spending some time reading and asking others for advice.  My buddy, Josh, spent plenty of time giving me tips, lending me a truing stand and dish gauge, and checking the wheels for tension after they were built.  Kudos to Walt’s Bike Shop for letting me distract the shop mechanics with my questions when I wasn’t paying for help and generally being a nuisance.

Also, I couldn’t have done it without the help I got from two great books:  The Art of Wheelbuilding by Gerd Schraner, and The Bicycle Wheel by Jobst Brandt.  Schraner’s book is a look at wheel building as a means of art, while Brandt’s is more of a step-by-step guide.  Together they gave me enough confidence to get started, and their advice apparently paid off.