To me, there are few things in life more enjoyable than building wheels. I think wheelbuilding is in essence a ritual, and has all the elements tha t go into cherished rituals. It combines concrete manual action with the need to intellectually understand what one is doing. It requires skill to do correctly, yet it is a skill which almost any human being of any a ge is capable of mastering with a reasonable amount of practice. While t here are specific steps one must take, the process of truing and tensioning is subjective enough to give wheelbuilding a certain artistic dimension. It requires sufficient physical and mental attetion to force one to put aside other concerns for a while. And once one completes the wheels, th ere is the satisfaction of actually riding them, wheras with painting or or igamy or flower arranging one can only display and admire the result. Th ere is always something satisfying in utilizing a practical object which on e has created with one's own hands rather than buying from someone else, rem inds us that making money is not the only important activity in life. Ev en if a wheel I built myself is not as good a one I bought, I still like it more just because I built it.
Regards,
Jerry Moos
Big Spring, Texas, USA
From: Tom Harriman <transition202@hotmail.com> Subject: RE: [CR]building wheels To: tom_s_dalton@yahoo.com, earle.young@tds.net Cc: "Classic Rendezvous" <classicrendezvous@bikelist.org> Date: Tuesday, September 30, 2008, 12:19 AM
Dear Tom.
Having both ridden both store bought wheels and wheels of my own making, I would like to shed a little light on this subject. The wheels I built my self were of better quality, and improved the ride of the bikes. They ne eded to be trued less often, and I never had broken spokes or broken axle s. All around an improvement.
However, ride quality is a difficult thing to measure, and as there are no standards, we have to trust in each others impressions of how changes we make to our bikes affects there rides. The old saying applies here her e, we can't really measure quality, but we know it when we ride.
The other factor making this difficult is a little does of pride. I feel p retty good the first time I take a new set of wheels out for there maiden s pin, which I'm sour has an influenced all of our impressions of our bikes . We should all take comfort and pride in the fact that we are helping to
keep the art of wheel build alive and strong in our culture.
Tom (as True as his wheels) Harriman.
San Francisco, Ca
> Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2008 08:37:22 -0700
> From: tom_s_dalton@yahoo.com
> To: earle.young@tds.net
> CC: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
> Subject: [CR]building wheels
>
> Earle,
>
> I don't know that any recent post was a direct attack on you, but
clear
ly
> you think one was. I don't want to take sides, and I know I'm
risking
t
> hrowing fuel on your fire, but I have a question: How do you know your
wh
> eels are so special? Do you personally ride your own wheels and those
> of other experienced builders and notice a difference? Is that differenc
> e in the feel of the wheels as you ride, or is it a difference in durab
ilit
> y? Have you ever tried doing a blind comparison? Do you rely on fedba
> ck from other riders who you build wheels for? Are these professional
> riders? Have these riders ridden lots of wheels buit by other experience
> d builders, or are they comparing your wheels to stuff built by machine
,
> or some kid at BBC building his 20th wheelset? It seems to me that
> it would be very hard to show that there is a significant difference betw
ee
> n a wheelset built by you and any wheelset built with carfeully chosen pa
rt
> s by a
> guy who simply knows how to build wheels, such as a guy like me who ha
s bu
> ilt only several hundred sets.
>
> My earliest wheel builds were pretty sloppy, and it took me forever to
dial
> them in and even then I doubt the tenison was particularly even or at th
e
> correct level and they weren't perfectly true. My more recent
wheelsets
> are more precise, with good even tension and excellent final shape. T
he
> practical difference was that the earlier ones might have needed to be t
ru
> ed a bit more often, but even that comparison could reflect the use of
diff
> erent parts. So, in my experience, there was little practical differ
ence
> between my early so-so builds and my later very good, perhaps excellen
t bu
> ilds. I'm left thinking that there is a point of diminishing returns,
an
> d I'm quite skeptical about the supposed benfits of anyone's
superlative
wh
> eelbuilds.
>
> Personally, exclusively using DT spokes, Wheelsmith spoke prep, and
a well-
> chosen rim has done more to improve my satisifaction with my end product
th
> an getting mired in the details of aboslute of relative tension measureme
nt
> . But that's just me, and I'd like to know the objective basis
for yo
> ur confidence in your builds.
>
> Tom Dalton
> Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA