All the bits arrived this week for the Jumping Through Hoops project, including the custom-cut spokes. Rather than the Phil Wood spokes I had cut for Hornsby, I went with DT Swiss double-butted spokes, which are more appropriate for Kuroko anyway and match the rims and rear hub.

I started building the wheels with the front hub on Saturday. I gave the hub a quick cleaning before starting, because it’s a lot easier to do when it’s naked.

I carefully laid out all the parts and tools for the build. It turns out the nipple driver wasn’t needed because the DT Swiss aluminum nipples are not slotted.

The mark of a real wheel builder, as Ali Clarkson explains in the video that I followed once again while building, is to line up the valve hole in the rim with the logo on the hub. The SON Dynamo hub doesn’t have any logos on the body, so I arbitrarily chose the “SONdelux 12” marking on the flange as the stand-in.

I’ve built a number of wheels in my day, including a pair of hoops for Hornsby just two months ago. But every build is different and this one presented some new challenges. The nipples have washers, and these were genius for finding every opportunity to get lost inside the rim, requiring several minutes of shaking and rattling before they emerged again. In addition, as seen below, the logos on the rims were not aligned from one side to the other! This is a first for me, and it meant that when I was looking for the valve hole, it might not be aligned with the logo depending on which side of the rim I was viewing.

Finally, and this is entirely on me, I laced up the third round of spokes into the wrong set of holes on the rim, and didn’t notice my mistake until I tried the first spoke of the fourth round. I ended up unlacing all seven spokes of the third round and doing them over in the correct spot. Cue more washers being dropped inside the rim.

I took my time bringing the spokes up to tension and truing the wheel. The dynamo hub is somewhat offset by the disc brake mount, so although the spokes are the same length on each side, they require different tensioning to get the wheel centered between the dropouts. In addition to this consideration, the aluminum nipples are more fragile than the brass I’ve worked with in the past.

Another day, another wheel

On Sunday I applied some finishing touches to the front wheel (above) and the continued with the rear wheel. With the memory of building the front wheel fresh in my mind, things went more smoothly. Which is not to imply no washers were lost in the rim — on at least four occasions everything came to a halt while I gave the wheel a good shaking until the misplaced washer fell out.

The rear hub is more asymmetrical, thanks to the space required for the freehub. As a result, the spokes on the non-drive side are 1mm longer. Still, it required a lot of extra tension on the drive side to bring things into true with the rim centered between the dropouts. In the end I got it to within 1-2mm, and gave up on further improvement as I was on the verge of stripping out the nipples.

Fortunately with this frame and tire size, this is not likely to be an issue.

Weigh-in

I didn’t weigh the bare rims to make a comparison, but only the built wheels (sans tires, rim tape, valves. etc.).

Weight (g)	Front	Rear
Before	983	923
After	1099	931

From the results it’s apparent the new rims are somewhat heavier than the ones they’re replacing. The front wheel gained 166g, a combination of the increased rim weight and the change from a cross 2 lacing to cross 3 (meaning longer spokes). On the rear, where the change was from cross 4 to cross 3 (shorter spokes), the weight increase was a modest 8g.

Following the build and truing, I mounted the tire on each rim. It was a lot more work than expected, requiring not just the tire levers but a lot of force on those as well.

I haven’t yet tried inflating the tires — I’m just too bloody knackered at the moment. But all things considered — the extremely tight tread, the close-fitting rim tape — I don’t expect a lot of trouble.

Remaining to be done

Apart from filling up the tires and verifying they’re holding air, the following tasks remain:

• Replace chains and cogs
• Replace brake rotors
• Replace brake pads
• Adjust all of the above

There’s no particular emergency on any of the above, as the heat wave continues, but I do want to have one or two rides in before this year’s Tour de Tohoko.