FYI: I just laced a new profile hub wheel last night and it is sweet. oddly enough it is way cheeper to buy in parts
parts from unicycle.com
Profile Hub 299
Double Wide 79
spokes 14.4
rim strip 2.99
Tube 10
Gazzaloddi 59
Total 464.39
Built Wheel 569.00
Diff 104.61
(I assume shipping is the same)
Lacing is pretty straight forward, check out
4 cross is very similar to 3 cross
hell, you could get titanium (2$/ea) spokes and it would still be a lot cheaper.
re: titanium spokes
They (John Kovachi and the Drummonds)don’t recommend titanium spokes for the sun doublewide rim, saying that the stiffness of that rim and the stiffness of the titanium spokes will cause the spokes to pull through or deform the eyelets. Something needs to be able to flex a bit under load. For other rims they’re OK I guess.
Some of the Kovachi wheel builds are quite expensive. Over $100 for a wheel build is a bit much. I don’t know why the cost of some of the wheel builds have gone up so much. They didn’t used to be that expensive.
At that markup it makes more sense to just buy the parts and have the wheel built locally. I’ve been getting my wheels built by a local wheel builder. The hard part is finding a shop that can build a good muni wheel. Not all shops are expert wheel builders. The trick is finding a good wheel builder. I’ve found a local shop that does an absolutely fantastic job building wheels. He’s a freerider and builds wheels to take freeriding abuse. I’ve had zero problems with any of the wheels he’s built. And it’s $30 labor for a wheel. Saves $70 over the Kovachi build and I’m getting what I feel is a better wheel.