Mark Poore wrote: Just some of my thoughts on wheels and tensiometer after 30 years of building wheels and having learned from Boots Ward who built more wheels
that anyone I can think of. Would you agree with that Larry B?...
No offense to Boots, but at the risk of being immodest I have to throw my hat into the ring for the title of "who built the most wheels". You guys will have to vote:
I started working in the bicycle industry in 1971 at a shop (Englebosch Cycles) that was founded by a Flemish expatriate who had ridden professionally in Europe. By the time I worked there Felix Englebosch was retired and the shop was run by his nephew and niece. In the European tradition, the niece handled the wheel building chores. She took me under her wing and before long I was doing the wheel building under her watchful eye. I also started road and track racing at that time.
After a couple of years I took a job as a lead mechanic in a much bigger shop that employed 15 mechanics in peak season. In the winter the shop owner would have all the mechanics build wheels all day long every day. These wheels were used for repairs and whole-saled to smaller shops during the season. After a couple years of doing this he started having more demand for wheels then they could build in the off season so he had me doing piece work at home while still working as a mechanic 40 hours a week. I usually built 100 to 200 wheels per week.
I decided to go to collage and quit the job but continued to do the piece work. About the time I graduated the demand for wheels was huge! We set up a small scale production line with semi-automatic lacing machines. I handled all the tensioning and truing. This was my only job for 14 years. Most of the wheels we churned out had steel rims but probably about 20% had alloy rims. We supplied wheels to many of the East coast importers and distributors. During that time I tensioned and trued over 400,000 wheels. No exaggeration, I have the ledgers. No I didn't take the time to use a tensiometer but I do now.
During this same time I was racing so I built lots of wheels for the guys on the race circuit. When I would go to races I would always be delivering finished wheels to a few guys and be taking in hubs from other guys. I think that about a dozen wheels that I built were ridden to national medals.
In 1990 I opened Centerport Cycles. Needless to say wheel building has been a specialty. I still have a few wholesale accounts. I've had the good fortune to have 2 sets of my wheels ridden in the Olympics... I really like building wheels; especially when they hold up well. I don't know how many I've built. I wish I kept track...
Jamie Swan / Centerport Cycles - Northport, Long Island, New York.