Wheel Building Witchcraft

Round and round and round it goes, where it stops, nobody knows...

Wheel Builders and Bike Mechanics are two different types of people. 

The main difference between a wheel builder and a bike mechanic is time. I can build a wheel, but it takes me a day or so. My partner can build a wheel from scratch in an hour. 

For some people, it just clicks. It's a calm, steady, and repetitive task that requires laser focus. If you lose track of anything, you'll end up with a brand new piece of modern art. 

In a former life, my partner used to do a lot of guitar stringing, which is a transferrable skill and uses very similar techniques. I've often thought that people who are good at knitting would also make good wheel builders. A repetitive task, following a pattern, gauges and tensions - very similar indeed. (I am a keen knitter for the record, shoutout to Anna at Wild and Woolly in Clapton for my yarn fix). 

Some people with ADHD find that building wheels benefits from their ability to hyperfocus (obvs this doesn’t work for everyone with ADHD); the downside is that because you lose track of time, you might come up for air 3 days later.

There are many ways to lace a wheel, (Brandt and Schraner being the main two), but the one that clicked for me was Schraner's method. I didn't learn this way of building until a decade had passed. It was like seeing the matrix. Once you learn the pattern, it all makes sense. It halved the time I spent wheel building.

I have passed on this holy document to the mechanics here at LBK, and Silvi took to it like a duck to water - she's now teaching our wheel building series. (She's also a guitarist, hmm...🤔 ) 

For the curious, here's Shraner's now out of print but still very relevant and much shared guide: https://documents.pub/document/gerd-schraner-the-art-of-wheel-building.html?page=1

GET HANDS ON

We are in the thick of building up our 3 part Wheel Building series.

Repetition is KEY to building muscle memory. If you ever want a second hand wheel to practice lacing, we might have a wheel with a busted hub going spare, so you are welcome to take it. Get in touch.

Each class is a prerequisite to the next class, so if you want to learn how to lace a wheel in Part 2, you must take Part 1. The knowledge scaffolds on top of each other.

PART 1

PART 2

COMING SOON

Part 3: Calculating Spoke Length, Lacing & Truing a Wheel

BEGINNER’S MIND

Silvi shares her journey into learning how to build wheels:

I have made loads of mistakes trying to build a wheel. Those mistakes have been wrong calculations based on the ERD given on websites [editor: never trust the ERD given on the rim's website], and relying on the tools I'm using without double checking those tools are the right ones. The last wheel I built, I checked all my tools except for the ERD measuring tools. I didn't measure those and I got the wrong calc by 2mm, and then when I was building the wheel it got to the point where 3/4 of the wheel was really tight and I couldn't finish the rest. Wheel building has given me massive trust issues: triple check everything, every measurement, every tool, give yourself a break and go back and check.

I've made mistakes lacing, I've missed out on the crossings when I was building a wheel when I was just starting. Instead of an under/under/over [lacing pattern], I did under/under/under. I'm like, this wheel looks really weird. And not being able to spot that mistake but having someone else spot it for you, once you make that mistake, now you know what to look out for.

I've put the spoke in the wrong hole in the rim, at the start of building, and then when I got to a point halfway through I'm like, why does this pattern look so weird? It doesn't look uniform at all...oh right. You start counting every hole, you start looking at the inbound/outbound spokes and you realise oh shit, I need to do everything over again.

There's so many stories I have of truing a wheel and then getting distracted, and then not remembering how many turns you've done to get the tension right, and then because you don't remember, you have to start over again. It's one of those things that you can't not be concentrating or do automatically, coz once you're lost it can make your life really, really difficult.

Have we scared you yet? Now that you know the trials and tribulations of wheel building, sign up here! (I should probably write a newsletter on why knowing how to build wheels is useful, and why hand built wheels are better than machine built / off-the-peg wheels…)

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2 RIDES IN 1 DAY

The Big Ride for Palestine’s Sunday ride will join up with the London Cycling Campaign’s Women’s Freedom Ride.

This International Women’s Day, we stand in solidarity with the women of Palestine.

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I enjoyed

Mildred Locke

’s latest newsletter, a riposte to James Cleverly’s limp argument that pro-Palestine protests have made their point and should therefore stop.

A response to James Not-So-Clever-ley

And I cannot stop thinking about Aaron Bushnell, the 25 year old member of the US Air Force who self-immolated in protest of the US government/military’s complicity AND participation in the genocide of Gaza. I can’t help but snort at the smear campaigns going on by mainstream media: they are casting a wide net trying to discredit him.

Joshua P. Hill

wrote a heartfelt response to Bushnell’s death:

Don't let Aaron Bushnell's self-immolation be in vain

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Thanks to the aforementioned income issues with the cost of parts, our hours have changed slightly - we will not be open for repairs on Saturdays anymore, only for teaching and saddle fitting. And those are by appointment only.

And with that, I leave you with a video of actual Gerd Schraner teaching wheel building. If a video’s not enough, you know where to find us!

Ride on,

Jenni x