If you’ve ridden serious mileage on a pair of wheels built properly (by hand) you’re likely to appreciate their value. The skill and energy that’s put into their construction is stored in the finished item as ride quality, strength and longevity. A satisfying activity, wheelbuilding requires close attention to detail, patience and skill. Beware of cheap wheelbuilding services though, as in order to get the finished wheel to ‘stand’ properly there’s more to it than simply lateral & radial truing and this takes time and skill.
To paraphrase wheelbuilding hero Gerd Schraner: “The aim is stability and balance in the spoke structure, using the best and highest tension, to achieve a durable unit that remains stable while being ridden yet produce enough elasticity to cope with excessive load.”
Dead Rats Cycles is happy to discuss all options and offer recommendations having built wheels for disc, rim and drum brakes – for cassette, freewheel, fixed wheel & internal hub gears – onto various sized rims (mostly made of aluminium, with some steel and carbon) with different spoke types in a range of hole counts and lacing patterns.
Certain methods are tried & tested and for most instances we recommend the classic wheelbuilder’s wheel consisting of quality box-section eyeletted aluminium rims laced to good quality hubs in a 3 cross pattern, using double butted stainless steel spokes & brass nipples – we generally use DT Swiss Competition or Sapim Race spokes. Dead Rats Cycles also caters for wheel truing, rim/spoke/nipple replacement, re-tensioning, re-dishing, axle re-spacing & conversions, freehub replacement and hub servicing.
