I’ve been riding since 1990, and over that time I’ve slowly become a pretty competent home mechanic. I’ve built up several bikes from bare frames, bled brakes, and handled just about every repair and maintenance job along the way, with a few exceptions I still leave to the pros at my local bike shop. The tools came along as my skills progressed. Every Christmas my wife knows what to get me: more bike tools. I make sure to nudge her in the right direction. Years ago she gave me a Park truing stand, and I built a couple of wheels with it.
The Park truing stand, the tension meter that waited years for this moment, my notes from the master class with Mongo Dan, and Jobst Brandt’s The Bicycle Wheel. I need all the help I can get on these first ones.
They didn’t last. They just couldn’t take the abuse I put them through, and I ultimately had them rebuilt by a local wheel builder. Looking back, I did a bunch of things wrong. For starters, I didn’t have a proper spoke tension meter. That came later, and it’s been sitting idle in my toolbox ever since, waiting for a second chance. So I gave up building, but the Park stand never went idle. I still true all my wheels on it, and it has seen a lot of use over the years.
When I ordered my custom rigid bike from Max Kullaway (333 fab), I specced it so I could run either 27.5+ or 29-inch tires. I’ve always ridden it with 27.5s tires. Every so often I’d borrow 29er wheels from other bikes, mostly for longer rides, and on a couple of occasions I set the rigid up as a mullet.
Max built three frames for me, and they all have names: the rigid (Nancy), another mountain bike (Dali), and a gravel bike (333). I ride them all, but Nancy is special. It was one of the last frames he built. He was very sick while he was finishing it, and he passed away in August 2021, not long after I got the frame and fork. I felt a little guilty for bugging him about it, but he told me that when he was building, despite his illness, he was in a happy place. He poured his heart and soul into this frame and fork, and building its wheels with my own hands felt like the right way to honor that.
This past spring, for my own health reasons (that’s a story I’m telling elsewhere), I bought an eBike and set it up as a full 29er. I should have been riding it as a mullet all along, but I didn’t have a proper 27.5 wheel for it. That need gave me the chance to revisit wheel building. When I ordered the hub and rim for that wheel, I splurged and picked up a pair of hubs and 29 rims for Nancy as well.
I took a shot at the 27.5 rear wheel first, and again I was doing a poor job. I had a hard time picking the right spoke lengths and ultimately reached out to a couple of wheel-building friends for advice. One of them, Dan P., aka “Mongo Dan,” checked my lengths and offered to give me a wheel-building master class. I accepted.
The finishing touch. The White Industries logo, lined up through the valve hole.
We built that rear wheel together. Well, mostly Dan built it while I watched closely and took lots of notes. I learned a few things I didn’t know along the way. One of them has nothing to do with how the wheel performs, but it shows how much pride a good wheel builder takes in the craft: line up the hub logo so you can see it through the rim’s valve hole. Armed with all that, I set out to build the new set of 29s for Nancy.
And I did. Mostly.
I bought a couple of new tools to help, mainly a nipple sorter and a new nipple driver. The driver has a thin wire tip that holds the nipple snug while you thread it onto the spoke. The sorter lines up all the nipples so they’re easy to pick up with the driver. Last time around I managed to drop at least one nipple inside the rim cavity, and getting it out was a royal pain in the ass. Not this time. And that tension meter finally got to earn its spot in the toolbox.
When I finished, I took both wheels to Dan for his approval. He helped me tension both wheels properly and gave me more advice to make the process easier, faster and more precise. I took a bunch more notes, which I’ll compile into a reference guide for the next builds.
I still need plenty of practice, but I’ve unlocked a new level of bike maintenance, and I’m confident I can build more of these. There’s a project frame sitting in my garage that needs wheels, and a pair of hubs and rims for it is already on the way. That will make wheels four and five in just the last few weeks.
I just need a set of tires, and Nancy will be ready for a spin at a local trail. I’ll report back on how good a job I did (with lots of help from Dan) after a few miles on these new hoops.
Would you trust me with your wheels yet? Probably not. But what’s a repair you’ve been putting off? Tell me in the comments.
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