Building this wheel was not that difficult. A lot easier than I had anticipated. The actual building time was probably about 5 hours.
The wheel I built was made up of: Airfoil rim, UDC Superwide hub, Brass nipples (Semcycle), Stainless steel spokes (Tom Miller Unicycle Factory, brass spoke head washers (Bike Tools Etc.)
Most of the items were shipped to me within 5 days. Tom Miller’s spokes took about 10 days. If I could have gotten the check to him quicker than standard mail, I may have had them in about 7 days. The longest wait was for the Air Foil rim. That took about 6 weeks I believe. When I had ordered the rim, it was at the time that the rim making machine was broken. I received one of the “recalled” rims. I kept it, I didn’t have any trouble mounting the tire.
If any one is going to try this for the first time, get this book from Amazon.com - “The Art Of Wheelbuilding” book by Gerd Schraner
It is a step by step guide.
For strength, I would put it up against any other wheel.
I wouldn’t do anything different if I were to build an airfoil rim again. Before I started building, I read the book carefully a few times, and made sure that I had all of the parts that I needed
One of the items mentioned in the book is brass spoke head washers. It’s a tiny item and not very expensive. I had to do a google search to find them in a reasonable sized quantity.
If you do not want to end up with broken spokes with the Tom Miller spokes and the UDC Super wide hub, they prevent movement of the spoke in the oversized spoke hole and are required.
Since I was going to invest my time and money putting this together, I made sure that I covered all of the tiny details.
If you follow the book, the worst that I believe that could happen is that It might take you a little longer to build this wheel.
i have built 3 wheels a 26in and 2 20in trials. all three wheels have kh hubs. the trials wheels where the easest because they didnot need coustom spokes. for the 26in all 36 spokes had to be threded by me this took a long time but after that was done the wheel was togather in under an hour. all the wheels i have built seem realy strong. they do not squeak or gron and they easly handle drops of 6+ ft
i got a local guy who builds wheels like a true artist. seriously. this dude is 22 or so, worked for santa clara cycles in california, and learned to build wheels at wheelsmith. he built/tensioned a 26 mtn bike wheel in under an hour. he’s amazing.
I did my coker in about 2 1/2 I had another person to help me though. Building a wheel is like learning to unicycle it just takes practice and determination. The wheel being so big actually maybe made it easier. 19" are harder in my opinion. I’ve been complimented on some of my building of a friends 19" by Scott Wallis.
> If you start with the following items, you would have most of what you
> need except for the actual wheel components. Hub, spokes, rim.
>
> From Amazon.com - “The Art Of Wheelbuilding” book by Gerd Schraner
Here are two more references: Sheldon Brown’s website has an adequate
description of wheelbuilding. Jobst Brandt’s book “The Bicycle Wheel”
is the other standard reference onthe subject, and offers explanations
from an engineering perspective - a refreshing break from the
mysticism often promulgated by cyclists.
To build a quality wheel, you have to make it round, true, tight,
stress relieved, and evenly tensioned. This is all pretty
straightforward if you start by screwing each nipple the same number
of turns and make minor adjustments as you increase tension evenly.
It gets a lot harder when the spokes are started randomly.
i know there has been a few discussions in the past but whould i use something while re-building a coker wheel in the form of a lube or loctite on the spoke threads? cheers
Nope none of the such (at least I haven’t or even heard of that being done).
I honestly don’t see how a LBS could take 3 weeks to build a unicycle wheel, even a week seems long unless they count it as a low priority job. I’d just learn to do it myself and maybe have a backup LBS if you cant figure it out.
I built my first wheel 2 weeks ago. An airfoil upgrade. All went well, the only thing was that I had to pay the LBS $10 to mount the tire on the airfoil rim.
All went pretty easy, I’m glad I did the build, kinda proud.
I think I was successful because I searched the web for building tutorials, and read a number of them (4-5), but especially I read Sheldon Brown’s tutorial carefully several times.
