Juli's Wheels -- Lace 'em up!

Last night was what I suppose I'd consider the "big day" in my wheelbuilding class at Broadway Bicycle school -- I laced both of the hubs into the rims!

Now, on the scale of human achievement, this isn't really all that big a deal. Millions of spoked wheels are produced worldwide each year, after all. But these two are my first, and may well be my last, so I'm going to savor the experience.

So what'd I do? Well, I started with several sets of components -- two Velo-Orange Diagonale 650B rims (so shiny and pretty), a pair of sturdy old Specialized sealed bearing hubs (not shiny or pretty, but stout and bulletproof), fifty-two 276mm stainless spokes for the front and non-drive-side rear, eighteen 274mm spokes for the drive side rear, a GladWare tub full of chromed brass nipples and two different colors of Spoke Prep, which is a type of thread locking compound. Then Dave led the class through the process of lacing up the wheels.

The first step was to smear Spoke Prep on the threaded ends of the spokes. The two different colors were to distinguish the spoke lengths -- the long ones got the taupe-colored spoke prep, and the short ones got the baby blue. Using two different colors would ensure that we wouldn't use the wrong spokes in the wrong places. Except when we (I, really) did.

Spokes prepped, the lacing began. Dave gave us some tips on how to show some deliberation about the details of the wheel. Stuff like making the logo on the hub body line up radially with the valve stem hole on the rim. And making sure the valve stem hole fell in the right place within the spoke pattern, to make sure it would be easy to get a pump head onto the valve stem. Or making the labels on both rims readable from the drive side of the bike. Stuff like that, both functional and aesthetic.

Those things in mind, we started lacing. Which really means threading spokes through the holes in the hub, and running them outward to the holes in the rim, then securing them with a nipple. It wasn't as hard as I expected it to be. Really, it was pretty simple -- just a matter of knowing where to start, which spokes to thread next, and which holes to run them to, given the desired spoke pattern (three-cross, in this case, which means that each spoke crosses three other spokes on the way to the rim).

I did make some mistakes, though. I was feeling pretty chatty, and at one point I realized I was using short spokes on the non-drive side, and I had to take like 6 spokes out of the wheel, and replace them with the longer ones. Then another time, I realized I was working sort of backwards, and had to take another 8 spokes out, twist the hub a bit, and then re-lace those 8 spokes again in a different direction. It could have been worse -- I caught both mistakes myself, and Dave was right at hand to offer course correction.

In the two hours of class, I managed to get both of my wheels laced, so I'll be in good shape to start the next steps. They are still pretty floppy, and there's still quite a bit of work left to go. I have to make sure they're dished right, which will result in the rim being centered between the outer lock nuts on the hub -- necessary if you want your rims to sit smack-dab between your brake shoes, which most of us do. Then they have to be round, with the axle sitting dead-center of the rim's circle, which I think most of us would intuit the importance of. And they have to be true, so they don't wobble like a potato chip while they turn. And perhaps least obviously, they should have even spoke tension across each side of each wheel, so that the wheel isn't overly stressed at any given point, which would lead to their prematurely getting out of whack.

So the dramatic part is done -- the part that makes it look like I actually did something. But the hard work -- the meticulous and frustrating work of making the wheels right and usable -- is still to come.  One of the wheels is pictured above, sitting at a bench at Broadway Bicycle School -- can't tell which it is.  You can see it pretty much looks like a wheel.  But the spokes are slack, and the wheels unusable as a result -- you can tell because the spokes are curved, not straight (they're not under much tension).

I hope Juli will be impressed by the final results, and treasure these, her father's first (and possibly only) wheels. If she doesn't, that's OK -- I will. And I won't remind her of all my hard work before every ride, I promise. I'm having too much fun to play that card.

All for now,

J

Juli's Wheels -- Pieces Parts

The wheel building class at Broadway Bicycle School started this week! I drove into Cambridge in one of my folks' cars, because Allyson was in town earlier this week, and she'd borrowed my Mazda for a few days. Borrowing seldom-used "spare" cars isn't always a good idea, and this week it turned into sort of a carnival of gremlins. I managed to avoid crashing into anything or being bitten. Long story.

Class was good. I'm one of three students, so it's a smaller and so far more social group than my last group. Each of us is building a different type of wheelset, with different hubs and different rim sizes, so it should be interesting to see how each project progress.

As I've mentioned before, my project will be to lace a set of 650B rims (either V-O or Velocity, depending on what's available) onto a vintage Specialized sealed bearing hubset. I think I properly spaced the rear hub for 126mm spacing (it was 120, originally), but we may need to adjust that in class. The 126 spacing will allow the rear to host a 7-speed freewheel, and then the final assemblies will see duty on Juli's new-to-her Schwinn frame (which is only a handful of parts away from being buildable).

This week, we mostly talked about what we wanted in the way of wheels, and why, and then chose parts. I already had my hubs, and knew what my rim choices would likely be, so most of the class I listened to and supported the dialog around the other students' wheels, which were being built from new and as-yet-unacquired parts. Did you know a Rohloff hub can run $1700, retail? That's a big nut, but then again, there's a little 14-speed transmission inside the thing, so it's a pretty sophisticated piece of equipment.

Apart from already knowing my rim and hub selections, I did have to make a couple of choices. I hadn't given any thought at all to spoke or nipple type. I think (can't remember for sure) I went with straight gauge DT Swiss spokes (vs. butted spokes), and I know I went with chrome plated brass nipples. The straight-gauge spokes are heavier, cheaper and not as strong as butted spokes, but these are wheels for a kid's bike, not a bike I'm going to put a thousand miles on per year.

To me, the way wheels lace up is really pretty cool. In a sense, spokes are long and skinny bolts, and nipples are nuts. The spoke winds through a hole in the hub, and then runs outward to the rim to accept the nipple. The nipple, in turn, fits through a hole in the rim and then threads onto the spoke end to hold it in place. Arrange a bunch of these around the circumference of a hub, running in a pattern to the rim, tighten them to uniform tension (either across all spokes or per-side, depending on the situation) and you have a wheel.

But there's a lot of detail in getting the wheel built right -- spoke length, choosing a lacing pattern, getting the path for each spoke right for the pattern, centering the rim properly (relative to the outer locknut surfaces on the axle), and getting everything tensioned properly and consistently. You should see the formula used to calculate the spoke length!

It should be a fun experience, and I'm looking forward to going back in two weeks to see what the Velo-Orange rims look like, and start learning how to lace the wheels up.

Then, once the wheels are built, I'll still need a few things to get the build rolling:

650B tires, and something on the narrower end to work with the chrome fork I bought for the frame
650B tubes to match the tires
Rim strips, and I'm going to try the new Made-in-America ones from Rivendell
The aforementioned freewheel
Brake and shifter cables, and housing in Juli's chosen shade of blue
A threadless handlebar stem, starnut and cap
Blue "cork" handlebar wrap
A kickstand

And probably a handful of other small parts, as well. Not a lot, though. The build should make for a good Christmas break project, I think, with a Thanksgiving tear-down of the Fuji.

I'll keep you posted.

All for now,

J

Wisdom

Have you ever known anyone really wise? Someone who says important stuff that seems to make some sense at first, but then maybe a year later you really understand what they meant and why it was important? I do. A handful, actually, but one in particular inspired this post, after several weeks' hiatus.

I'm not sure if this dynamic makes me slow on the up-take, or if it makes those people especially wise. I'd like to think it's the latter. But I will also admit to blind spots.

My advice to myself is to listen harder to wise people, and spend more time thinking about what they've said. I think I'm getting better at that, but listening is a lifelong skill that can always use more work.

All for now,

J

Unless you look...

I've been using my Schwinn Sports Tourer about once a week all summer. I take it out with Ava on the trailer bike, to the grocery store for light shopping runs, over to the lake for kayaking trips, and it even went to Staples for a school supply run last week. That's not a lot of use -- less than 300 miles -- but it's regular use. The bike has felt and sounded just fine, from the saddle. Other than keeping the chain lubed and wiping the wheels down to clean off the aluminum dust after a wet ride, I haven't seen cause to do anything to it.

On Monday, though, I had my last class at Broadway Bicycle School, and brought the Schwinn into town for its turn in the work stand. The topic for Monday's class was to look at the front derailleur. Though none of my front derailleurs was giving me any problems, I do struggle with setting them up right the first time during a build. I usually get the angle a bit wrong, and have to tweak that, but sometimes I also end up with a chain that overshifts and drops off the big ring, to the outside, at the least opportune time. Easy fixes, but things I should be able to avoid by setting it up right in the first place. So I was looking forward to learning tricks from Dave, our instructor.

I wasn't disappointed. I learned that I typically set my front derailleurs too high above the outer chainring (just 2-3mm). I learned the proper angle for a front derailleur (outer plate parallel to the chain while in the outer position), and that setting this always a guessing game because you can't adjust it while it's in that position. And as an unexpected bonus, I saw a real cable housing cutter in action, making quick work of derailleur housing (which has linear wire strands under the casing, rather than a helical coil of flat wire). I tend not to use this stuff because it's so hard to cut with the tools I have, but it's not ideal to use the other stuff with indexed shifters, and I should get one of those cutters at some point.

On the work stand, I saw that my front derailleur was on the verge of overshifting the chain off the large ring, that there was a little slop in the derailleur cable, and that my derailleur was a little high, relative to the recommended position. The first was probably caused by having my cranks snugged down a bit in Siena -- I don't think I ever re-adjusted the derailleur's limit screws to match the cranks' slight shift inboard. The second was either because I didn't take all the slack out the first time, or because the housing settled a bit or cable streched. And the third was just me not knowing any better. All good to catch.

But as I poked around, a couple of other things popped up, completely unexpected. For starters, I was able to hear a lot more noise coming from the rear derailleur on the work stand than out on the road. In top gear, the derailleur was on the verge of noisily overshifting the chain off the cluster altogether, and in low gear, the jockey wheel was riding right on the sprocket, which was particularly rumbly when pedaling backwards. Both were easy to adjust away, but had been missed because I hadn't checked for problems in a while -- even though I'd made major changes to the bike (like a new wheelset after my May crash).

More seriously, though, I discovered that the rear wheel was a little out of true, and that the cause was a broken spoke. These wheels have maybe 500 miles on them, and have never been abused, so this was pretty surprising - I haven't broken a spoke in over 15 years! These are factory-made wheels, but they're not assembled from junk, by any means. The rims are Sun CR18's which are a strong touring/commuting rim. The hubs are Quanta parts with cartridge bearings -- perfectly decent hubs. And the spokes are straight-gauge DT Swiss, which are good spokes used by wheel builders everywhere. The spoke broke at the bend down at the flange, so maybe it had been weakened during forming, or maybe it had been overtensioned by the lacing machine -- who knows. I just hope I don't end up breaking spokes all over the place with these wheels.

Dave suggested we replace the spoke in class, since I was there and otherwise done with my tasks for the evening. So I took the wheel off the bike, removed the tire and tube and unscrewed the spoke from its nipple. Then I tried to remove the freewheel from the hub, but it wouldn't budge. Dave tried, too. Then we double-teamed the wheel and still couldn't unscrew it. I had the same problem with this freewheel on the previous wheelset as well, but the bike shop guys had been able to get it off for me. I'll hit it with some penetrating oil and give it another shot, but in the mean time left it in place, and just curled the spoke past the big sprocket. That proved painless enough, since the spoke was on the left side, not the drive side. Once the spoke was screwed into the nipple, I put the rim on the truing stand and straightened it out.

None of these issues were hard to address (though I'm glad I found the broken spoke in the setting I did). And none of them would really be surprising tweaks to have to make sometime after a build has been completed and things have settled in. What they really reinforced for me, though, is how important it is to give your bike a deliberate inspection every once in a while -- even just once per season -- to make sure everything is adjusted properly. I've never really believed in a regular tune up, thinking that the bike would tell me during normal use if something was wrong. Finding these problems really showed me that unless you get the bike into a stand and look, you may not notice problems that could leave you sitting by the side of the road, waiting for a lift home.

All for now,

J

Wheel Building Dilemma

On Monday night, class at Broadway Bicycle School focused on wheel truing.

I brought the Shogun into Cambridge for class, because it has the oldest set of wheels in my fleet -- an old but otherwise nice set of mid-'80's Shimano 600 hubs (a 6-speed freewheel hub in back) and charcoal anodized Mavic MA-40 rims. I had meetings on Monday afternoon, so my once-delayed plan to go into town on the T didn't pan out, again. I did drive in early enough to ride around a bit, but then a thunderstorm hit, so I retreated to my car.

The truing exercise was surprisingly easy, particularly since we were able to use nice Park wheel truing stands. The wheels were both out of true -- a couple of millimeters warped across a half or third of their circumference, rather than having a particular trouble spot. Once they were straight, I could feel that the spokes were pretty unevenly tensioned, so the rims themselves may no longer be straight. And their sidewalls are pretty worn, so they could stand replacement at some point.

To that end, the wheel truing class was really the reason I took this course -- so that I could sign up for the wheelbuilding course, which I did yesterday! In just a few weeks, I'll start the process of building a set of wheels. The question, now, is what to build?

When I last posted about this, my plan was to build up a new set of wheels for my Columbia straight-bar cruiser, put a front brake on it, maybe get some cantilever brake posts brazed to the rear triangle, and make that into an errand/around town sort of bike. I even picked up a set of SR hubs, a single speed freewheel and a set of 26" rims. From a cash outlay perspective, I'd need only go buy spokes to lace up a set of single speed, fat-rimmed MTB wheels in class.

A lot has changed since then, though, and that project doesn't make sense to me anymore. The Columbia is going on eBay shortly (no calls from Craig's List), so I'm not really interested in building up wheels for it. I also think I'm going to offload those wheel components I'd picked up, because I don't see a project that'll require a set of 26" single speed nutted-axle wheels in my future anymore. So no -- not those wheels.

Other candidates? Well, I recently bought a set of inexpensive but decent 650B wheels to use on Juliana's Schwinn, and confirmed that 650B rims will work well with that frame, both in terms of bottom bracket height and brake reach. There is one significant problem with that wheelset, though -- rear hub spacing. The rear hub is a mountain bike hub, spaced at 135mm, and this is an older road frame spaced for 120 or 126mm hubs. I've tugged at and spread the rear triangle enough to get the wheel into place, but the dropouts are noticeably no longer parallel in that position. That may compromise how well the quick release bites the rear dropouts, which may be a safety issue. I also suspect the rear derailleur alignment will be problematic with that setup.

So a second wheel-building option is to build up a set of 6/7 speed 126mm wheels for her, using a set of freewheel hubs I have. These are nice 36-hole Specialized cartridge bearing hubs that came with the Motobecane -- the core of the wheelset I destroyed in my Schwinn's crash in May. That would be a nice wheelset for Juli, and it would work much better with her frame. If I take this path, I'd have to shell out for a new set of rims, and then I'd have that other 650B wheelset kicking around. Waiting for a build for Ava, I suppose.

Still another path might be to build up an alternate 27" wheelset for the Schwinn, or another 700c wheelset for the Motobecane. I could build lighter wheels for the Schwinn, or sturdier wheels for the Motobecane, for example -- the opposite of what's on each bike today. But the wheelsets on both of those bikes is well-matched to the way I ride them, and both have low miles on them, so an alternate wheelset really isn't necessary. I'd be answering a question I'm not asking myself, there.

I guess I could also rebuild the Shogun's wheels, since the rims probably ought to be replaced. But I'm probably going to sell that bike as a single-speed in the spring, after taking the derailleurs off for Ava's Fuji build, swapping the chainrings and chain, and screwing on a single-speed freewheel and some shifter boss caps. I may try my hand at re-dishing the rear wheel to make it stronger, but putting new rims on that bike would be little different than throwing money away on the Columbia. Worse, it'd cost more than that option, because I have no 700c rims lying around.

Given the choices, I think building up a set of 650B wheels for Juli's bike makes the most sense. It's not the cheapest path, and it will leave me with an idle 650B wheelset for a while. But it's the safest path for Juli, and of all the choices, it's the one that will provide the most utility. So I will need to find a set of 650B rims. Maybe a set of high-polish V-O Diagonale rims? Velocity Synergy symmetrics? Whatever I settle on, it seems I'll be doing my part to help the 650B movement along.

I'll try again for the bike exploration in Cambridge next Monday, with the Schwinn, this time. It has lights and a lock, and I'd be comfortable locking it up outside on a rack while I check stuff out. The last class is a front derailleur class, and it's as good a bike as any for that. None of my front derailleurs really needs adjusting, but I always have to fuss with them after a build, so I'm hoping I'll learn some alignment tricks. Picking up little tricks from experienced hands has really made the class worth my while, and I'd recommend it even to folks who've spent time wrenching their own bikes. Particularly, if like me, that's been a process of learning through doing, rather than learning through instruction.

All for now,

J

Three-Up

I like this photo. I took several from different angles, and this view of the business-end of our bikes seemed to best capture them. This was taken early yesterday morning, before we headed out to Lexington for the MassBike summer family ride. That's Juli's Fuji, Ava's Trek trailer bike and my Schwinn Sports Tourer, left to right. There's room for one more up there, I think, with the right combination of mounts, spacing and orientation of the bikes.

The ride was good, but I don't have much to share from it. The 22-mile loop took us from Lexington High School into the Concord Battlefield/Hanscom area, over to the Old North Bridge, then into Bedford before cutting back down to the starting point. I have a couple of photos of the girls at the Old North Bridge, and a couple more of them eating ice cream at Bedford Farms.

It was the longest ride Ava's ever taken. Juli's been on one ride longer than this with me in the past, but I think that was on the trailer bike, and this was her longest solo ride to date. And it was their first organized group ride, too. Several milestones in there, and high-fives all around at the finish.

All for now,

J

650B Schwinn World Sport

It's not done yet -- not even close. But today I received the 650B wheelset I bought to try out with Juli's Schwinn, and it's official -- the bike will be built up as a 650B.

The wheels are basic, but perfectly serviceable. They've got inexpensive Deore hubs laced to inexpensive Weinmann ZAC19 rims. Hubs, skewers and rims are black, and spokes and braking surfaces are shiny, and it's a combination I think works pretty well. They won't knock anyone's socks off, but they should perform well for as long as Juli needs them.

The bike was built for 27" wheels, but it will support this smaller wheel size just fine. At the rear, the brake bridge is well-placed (if shabbily welded) for this conversion, allowing a Dia-Compe 750 centerpull to reach comfortably to the rims while using only about half of their adjustment range. The long and dorky fork, on the other hand, requires all of the available reach, which you can kind of see in the photo. Honestly, I was surprised by that, because it's not uncommon for the rear triangle to use up more brake reach than the fork -- my own Schwinn Sports Tourer is that way, for instance. Some older 10-speeds even used different brake sizes at either end -- a Weinmann or Dia-Compe 610 up front and a 750 in back. But that's OK -- the fork is coming off anyway, in favor of a 700C lugged fork (in chrome), and that will no doubt take an inch or so out of the fork legs -- a 650B wheel might even work with a shorter-reach 610 brake after that swap.

Swapping the fork is going to drop the bottom bracket a bit more than the wheel swap alone, and also steepen the head and seat tube angles. The angles they look pretty relaxed as it is, so I don't think the bike will be flighty or anything, but I'm a little concerned about bottom bracket height. Juli is running a 165 crank, so there probably won't be a problem, but I'll have to pay some attention to that, and will hold off on buying tires until I've had a chance to measure things out with the new fork. A little extra loft through a poofier tire might be called for, there. She's already had a pedal-grounding crash on her Fuji, so she understands the perils of pedaling through corners, but I don't want to handicap her with too little clearance, either.

It will be quite a while before the bike is ready to ride, though. I can still do a little work here and there, but most of the drivetrain is committed to the Fuji for the rest of this season, so it will likely be the end of this year before we get to the build stage. In the mean time, I'll keep gathering parts, and looking forward to what should prove to be a neat little bike.

All for now,

J