Good wheel building is hard to find in these days of haste and impatience. Many mechanics avoid wheel building like the plague, even to the point of being afraid of it. Wheel building skills of bicycle mechanics have degraded somewhat due to the introduction of factory built wheels, but even these require time with a critical eye and a good hand on the spoke key to ensure the best performance and reliability is to be ensured.

Care, patience and self-criticism are the most important qualities for good wheel building, backed by experience and a comprehensive technical understanding of the mechanics of wheel structures. Wheels can be built quickly, or they can be constructed with meticulous care and attention, utilising the best products, which in turn rewards the rider with better riding qualities and longer life wheels.

Building professional quality wheels is a satisfying profession. A well built set of wheels gives myself pride in labours undertaken in their construction but the most important result is they give the owner not only the satisfaction and knowledge of owning the best, but also the confidence of carefree riding.

Tie and soldering

Tie and soldering of spoke crossing points is an extra enhancement that can be done to high quality wheels. This technique is little known today it seems, but can transform a wheels performance.

It can give the front wheel a positive and direct response to steering input especially when stomping and sprinting out of the saddle. The rear wheels benefits by eliminating hub wind up and increased lateral stability, giving positive response to pedal force input. This is all the more important with low spoke number or light wheels. All your pedal force goes to the tyre.

In a race wheel if a spoke is damaged or broken, one can still continue on as the spoke does not flay around damaging the frame and paint but also the wheel stays truer.

Many pro team mechanics tie and solder special wheels for special events. {keep a keen eye out in the cycling mags}. Not many shop mechanics understand or have the know how to tie and solder.

I use the special tie wire made by "DT SWISS" for tying and soldering high quality wheels.

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