#wheelbuilding

We’ll take a look at the process of assembling a bicycle wheel using commercially available parts. It’s not a project where you build everything from scratch, but it will still present a fair bit of a challenge to anyone doing it for the first time.

By far the nicest wheelset I've built in recent years. It'll be going on a Faggin randonneur a friend is currently putting together.

SON Delux generator hub, White Industries T11 rear hub with a campy freewheel, H Plus Son Archetype rims, Sapim Race 2.0/1.8 DD Spokes and Sapim Polyax brass nipples. 32 Spokes each, triple cross lacing.

The SON is an old familiar, a local if you will, many have gone through my hands back in the day and they are still a delight to work with. No other hubs have flanges this intricately machined and the scratch protection (which I left on for my friend to peel off) is incredibly welcome. The electrical performance as well as the pressure equalization system are still unrivaled in the world of generator hubs.

The White Industries hub does somewhat manage to keep up with the stellar showing from the front. The titanium freehub body rules and the whole thing exudes confidence even in spite of the fairly low weight. Lacing it though? Not fun. For one the spokeholes are incredibly tight which makes for a disastrous combination with the tiny non-driveside flange. Wrestling the spokes through there resulted in an incredibly unsightly scratch I am deeply ashamed of. Tension discrepancy between the sides during building also turned out to be fairly high, around 500 Newtons, so I can't say I'm wholly sold on that aspect.

The Archetypes are stunning rims, one of the best looking ones out there if you ask me. Very pleasant to work with, chill during lacing and extremely chill during truing. Very straight out of the box, not so stiff that it becomes unresponsive to changes in spoke tension but nothing like the hysterics of say, a mavic open pro. Speaking of stiffness, they felt pretty firm during torsion relief and weight is also on point. A very nice balance altogether, big thumbs up. Sure they could be wider, but this bike won't be seeing tires wider than 35mm anyhow.

Rims made the latter half of the build a breeze, whole thing tensioned up to ~1100N and then finished off with spokefreeze.

Weight clocks in at exactly 1099g for the front wheel and 978g for the rear. Not exactly groundbreaking but these are touring wheels at the end of the day.