I made this tutorial for my great mate Ian after showing him the wheel building pro tips videos I have been putting together. He told me he'd always had trouble measuring up components to work out spoke lengths, mainly Effective Rim Diameter (ERD).

He asked me if I could make a video and that got me to thinking about how lazy I'd become. I mainly use my own spoke diary and online spoke calculators to make comparisons. But sometimes you get stuck and have to do it the old fashioned way. I was also reminded how it confused me when I first started building wheels. There were no online calculators. Heck, there was no 'online' anything!

I was lucky enough to work in a shop in my late teens where they had a Sutherland's Bicycle Manual. In there was the measuring instructions for components and the trigonometry formula to work out spoke lengths. There was also a spoke measuring wall chart. If you have ever tried measuring your components with one of those you'll know it's a challenge. My parents made me keep up my studies allowing me to race my bikes in exchange. I did alright at mathematics and enjoyed it, so you cam imagine how happy I was to stumble across the formula. I realised I was gonna use some of that stuff learnt at school to do something I thoroughly enjoy.

Making this video has taken me back to my early days, naïve in life and the benefits of learning. Especially when it's for something you love doing. I haven't used the manual way for a while now, but breaking it all down to explain how to do it has made me think I should do the math more often. I'd forgotten the joy of detail in what I learnt at the beginning of my wheel building journey.

I hope you are enjoying learning wheel building with me as your guide and don't forget to check out my other pro tip videos. Remember we all started somewhere and I am here to help. Once you break it all down wheel building is a journey of discovery, learning and achieving all the way through.

Learn how to build your own wheels successfully and you will get a great sense of satisfaction and achievement. On top of that you'll have the best upgrade your bike will ever get which will continue to put a smile on your face mile after mile. A skill that keeps on giving!

Let me know if there are any wheel building pro tips you would like to learn more about. I can't remember everything I know about wheel building. It is just something I do subconsciously these days, so a bit of prompting will jog my memory so I can share it with the wheel building community.

As always, if you are in doubt or don't feel confident about your bike maintenance, go and speak to a professional bike mechanic.

Leave any questions or comments below. Don't forget to LIKE, SHARE AND SUBSCRIBE...

Here is some resource for you to assist in building your wheels and getting a more technical understanding. Thanks to everyone who has put this information on the internet for me to share wit you.

https://www.wheelpro.co.uk/support/sp...
https://spokecalc.io/spoke-tension-th...
https://www.sheldonbrown.com/spoke-le...


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