The postage is going to be a problem. Packing the wheel securely takes ages and then you have to take it down the PO who will keep you waiting for 10 minutes and charge you £12 at the very least.
You can use an alternative delivery service but if there's no-one home the self-employed delivery guy slings it over the back fence and pushes a note through the door (If you are lucky).
Personally i would look into the murky world of rim strengths and spoke tensions which is the real key to a good wheel and then offer to build wheels for a local racer or two.
I no longer use parcelforce for my own stuff so I get my parcels picked up from home. 99% of the times there's somebody at home but you are right, it could be a pain to pack wheels properly. I will have to see how that works and see if it is something I'm prepared to do time and time again.
Certainly, stressing the spokes, correct spoke tension and perhaps even more important is even spoke tension are crucial key features of any good wheel. I have a spoke tensiometer that I use to check the final tension but my most trusted tool is a pair of good big ears
- Roger Musson encourages people to true by tone and perhaps that is the single most important talent that I have and I have learnt to use it to build wheels.
Some people like to make wheel building seem like it is a very difficult task. If I were to compare furniture making or shoe making with wheel building then I can assure you that wheel building is nowhere as difficult and by a long distance. With wheel building you can go back one, two stages or all the way to the beginning if you are not happy with your result.
What is actually wheel building? The first part is simply assembly (lacing the wheel) and anyone can follow a book to achieve that if you like. Of course, after a few times you don't need to look at any book to lace a wheel. Other patterns, 3x, 4x, 2x, are all related. If you have the correct components then radial is easier than the others mentioned. After the assembly, there is a short phase that could not be simpler which is removing the slack on the spokes, I personally take this phase a little further so that I can get a tone out of the spoke. Then it's a repetitive phase where you add tension, stress the spokes, true the wheel, dish the wheel, equalise the tension and so on until the wheel reaches a stable stage where stressing the spokes does not affect the lateral trueness nor the roundness of the wheel, the spokes have the correct tension for the type of spokes and most importantly the tension is constant across the wheel ( the dishing of the wheel dictates which side of the wheel has higher tension) - that's all there is to it. There's no room for adding any artistic talent. Just ask yourself, how many people have built their own wheels? Lots, so it can't be that difficult, can it? Of course there are many people that have tried and failed too, so, not a difficult task but not everybody can do it hence the need for wheelbuilders I guess.
What I have just described is not the only way - there are many ways to achieve the same end. A friend of my said "equalised the spokes thread" as the first step. I made myself a spoke driver like the one Roger Moss suggests to make so the tool equalises the spoke while I remove the slack. so, as they say, there are many ways to skin a cat but the import thing to remember is that the wheel has the correct tension, even tension and the spokes have been stressed during the building process.
For me it's far more difficult to advise somebody what components to get for a 1.5kg wheelset - I don't know all the components out there and to be honest I have very little interest in that, that is not my hobby
- with regards to rims, most rims are very strong nowadays one has to remember that light rims, few spokes and heavy riders don't mix very well
. There are a few other situations when it's no a good idea to mix components but those are very few cases.
although I remain confident that the wheels I build would be as safe as the wheels you get from any reputable wheel builder. If I had the slightest of doubts I would not offer the service. Who would not mind having an accident in their conscience? Not me, that's for sure.
