Product Review

"Master Wheelbuilding" is a complete tutorial on how to build wheels. Students learn how to take hubs, rims, spokes and nipples and assemble them into a finished wheel by lacing up the components and then tensioning the wheel to achieve proper tension, trueness and dish. No prior knowledge is assumed. If you want new bicycle wheels, you are faced with the following question. Should I buy stock wheels from a bike shop or have them custom built for me? This DVD gives you the attractive option of building them yourself. In so doing, you will save money and achieve an excellent result. Cycling enthusiasts usually wonder if it is possible for them to build a wheel as good or better than one they can purchase. The answer is emphatically yes. In the DVD, Bill explains rim brake, disc brake and fixed gear wheels and how to build them. Students learn how to use a truing stand, tensiometer, dish tool, and spoke wrenches. Little tricks picked up from building thousands of wheels are mentioned. The pros and cons of bicycle parts are discussed such as: aluminum and brass nipples; straight gauge and double-butted spokes, round and bladed spokes; Sapim CX-ray spokes; different extrusions and shapes of rims; deep section rims; differences between clincher, tubular, and tubeless rims; Stan's NoTubes rims; and, Velocity rims including the popular Deep V. Park Tools are used most of the time, such as the Park professional model truing stand, Park TM-1 tensiometer, and Park spoke wrenches, including the new 4-sided master spoke wrench which is very handy when tension levels start getting high. Bill demonstrates both the Park and VAR dish gauges and the Cyclus 4-sided spoke wrench that is important for bladed spokes, particularly Sapim CX-ray spokes and DT Swiss Aerolite spokes. Stress relieving is explained and demonstrated. Appendices go into further depth on the physics of wheels, how they work and what makes them strong, how to calculate spoke length, use a truing stand, torsion loads on wheels during accelerating and braking, and more. The skills learned in the process of building a wheel are also useful in routine bicycle maintenance, for example, in truing wheels and tensioning existing wheels to improve their speed and efficiency. From years of experience in building wheels and teaching wheelbuilding in a classroom environment, Bill is well familiar with the errors that novice builders are prone to commit and emphasizes the steps necessary to avoid them. He explains several mid-course checks to ensure the wheel is being assembled correctly. Even experienced builders use these same checks to catch and correct mistakes early. After you have learned how build a bicycle wheel, you will be able to build any kind of wheel for a mountain bike, road bike, recumbent, trike, hybrid, touring bike, tandem bike, fixie, downhill, single speed, etc. You'll soon realize the enormous satisfaction of riding on quality wheels you have built yourself and then start doing the same thing for friends and family. Building wheels is similar to flying an airplane in one sense, and Bill is a licensed pilot so he knows. No matter how many times a pilot has taken off and landed a given airplane, he follows a checklist, over and over again, to ensure that some key step is not inadvertently omitted. Building a wheel is similar. The key to the whole thing is following a procedure carefully as if it is a checklist. If you just randomly jump around, you will end up with a mess every time. But, if you are disciplined and pay attention to what you are doing, you will get consistently excellent results. "Master Wheelbuilding" will get you there!