A Wheel Building Story
With vibrant murals and delicious Spring airflow, the classroom is electrified for Wheel Building Day.
Through the west door, the Tuesday afternoon sun pools soft gold upon the concrete. Vibrant bicycle tools are painted on the wall beside a sweet, sleepy sloth, spread playfully around the whiteboard with prepared diagrams in black marker. Red carts sit before each student chair: workstations laid out with calipers, a hub, rim, two jars of spokes, spoke nipples, Tri-Flow, a rag, and a handout detailing today’s agenda.
It’s Day One of the two-session Wheel Building class — the most specialized mechanics course we offer, structured as an advanced dive into this specific niche. Like all our classes, the curriculum blends demonstration with hands-on practice, with space for questions and discussion throughout.
Today, the minutes before the start are easy and conversational. Emi, BICAS’ Education Coordinator and today’s instructor, chats with a sunny, lively group of students as the class start time approaches, swapping stories about unusual bikes — tall bikes, penny-farthings — easing them into the material the way she does so gracefully. At three o’clock, she gathers the room.
In attendance are four students — three community members who signed up through our website; alongside Lauren, a fellow BICAS mechanic and class instructor, who is looking to expand their knowledge base. With many years in the bicycle industry before having blessed BICAS with their skills last year, Lauren is participating in this less-regularly held class to learn a niche that is rarely practiced in commercial shops, where pre-built wheel sets are typically used for bike repair.
Introductions go around: names, pronouns, and what brought each person to the class. Excitement clearly saturates each answer — whether a long-held wish to learn the uncommon skill, or a creative desire to create wheels for their own bikes. When Emi shifts into instruction mode with, “Why would you want to hand-build a wheel?” the responses come quick and bright: “Better quality!” “Custom fit!” “Fun!” Emi meets each answer with easy enthusiasm, nodding, building on their thoughts. Yes — it’s an art. It’s romantic. But it’s practical, too: a well-made hub (the central component of a wheel) can last decades, and rebuilding a wheel — replacing only the pieces that are worn — reduces waste, honoring the ethos of reuse at the heart of BICAS’ practices.
The students’ energy sets the atmosphere as Emi begins walking through the materials in front of us with warmth and clarity. They’re a wonderful group: curious, engaged, quick to share what they know and eager to learn what they don’t.
“What would you consider when choosing a hub?” Emi turns the class’ attention to the first piece of our wheel-building puzzle: the hub.
It’s impossible not to lean in. Like a science, wheel building leans heavier on theoretical knowledge than most bike repairs, but Emi’s easy, collaborative, teaching style grounds the information. Answers flow from the students: axle type, locknut dimension, tire clearance, lacing pattern. Emi breaks each of these down, offering common measurements and tips.
In her hand gleams an unique example. It’s a Shimano rear hub from the late ’90s — silvery, faded, whose deep splines form a dramatic silhouette; built for radial lacing (spokes that don’t cross); for ten-speeds only. A hub like this demands careful research; because the wrong materials would throw off your whole build. As the weight of the hub passes from hand to hand, Emi propels the conversation forward: “So, what do you need to consider with gears?”
Students offer guesses — spacing, brakes, fixed versus single-speed — and Emi builds on each answer, weaving in anecdotes from her wheel building experience. She remembers one fixed gear hub where the lock ring threads had completely sheared off, which is a lesson in what can go wrong when components aren’t matched carefully.
When the discussion moves to rims, she shares another story: the first wheel she ever built. She’d taken every measurement, chosen a beautiful brown rim to match her bike — only to discover, after lacing it, that it was wrong size. A 700c rim where a 26-inch was needed — even that difference of millimeters makes a difference! “Double check, triple check,” she laughs. “Make sure your materials are right for your bike!”
From there, the class moves through the rest of the parts: spokes (butted, bladed, J-bend!), spoke nipples (brass is widely preferred!). Next, we examine radial forces, lateral forces, torsional forces: students guess how each applies to riding, and there isn’t only one right answer. When the lesson glides into lacing patterns, she gestures to the sample wheels around her. A standard BICAS wheel, she explains, uses three-cross lacing: both strong and reliable.
“Open your handouts!” Emi announces brightly. The multipage guide maps out the measuring process, shifting the lesson from theory to more tactile learning. Emi explains primary and secondary measurements; and demonstrates the use of calipers to measure spokes. She also explains ERD sticks, which measure Effective Rim Diameter.
Laughter bubbles up as the class lean in to work together; measuring the sample takes many hands! Next, the measurement is then taken in pairs by students for their own rims; while the other measurements — flange diameter, over locknut dimension, spoke hole diameter — are done individually. Students retrace steps with their own rims, jotting their findings into their handouts.
These findings are plugged into the final spoke calculator; the hum of conversation rises as the computer churns through math, and soft drink flavors become a topic of playful debate as the work gives way to easy chatter. Halfway through the first session, the mood is light and easy, and this momentum carries us naturally into a well-earned ten-minute break.
Just outside the west door, their laughter sounds like music as they chat during break, gathered brilliantly against the backdrop of brightly colorful, one-of-a-kind wheels that hang along the western fence.
When they reconvene, they are eager to delve into lacing. Emi explains options for lubrication — the common Spoke Prep, or her favored linseed oil; but for this class, Tri-Flow is the chosen treatment. Upon first dabbing grease into each spoke hole using a pair of Q-tips, each student’s rim is set to welcome their spokes.
With the spoke holes lubricated, the Tri-Flow drips onto nine spokes from the drive side jar. In goes the very first spoke. This is the key spoke, and the spoke nipple is tightened just enough to hold it.
After the drive side inbound spokes, follows the non-drive side inbound spokes. When it’s time to flip the wheel — in a thrilling demonstration, Emi grasps the spokes by the fistful; her smooth, practiced motion holding them steady — and students gasp as their own spokes slip out on the first try. But they get the hang of it, with scattered laughter. One by one, each of their spokes is laid flat, the pattern emerging now beneath their hands.
“At this point, they’re starting to look like wheels!” Emi quips, when the first set of outbound spokes are complete (“over, over, under”), until only the non-drive side outbounds remain. It’s 5:45 PM, but the room’s focus feels even more intense. For this last, tricky set of spokes, the unique tool Emi introduces resembles a bent spoke with a nipple clamped to the end.
The students are absorbed in the meditative pattern of lacing, and the wheels have by now taken shape. “Thursday’s all about truing and distressing,” Emi smiles, applauding the breathtaking work that everyone’s put in today. By 6:15, most are wrapping up, though the class runs until 7 to leave space for different paces. There’s no rush.
“How do you like lacing?” Emi asks, as the class winds down for the day. The answers are honest: satisfying, challenging, meditative. Students’ names are marked erasably on rims for next time. The excited energy softens back into easy conversation as they pack up, though there’s so much yet to come.
In the space between sessions, the magic of wheel building swirls in our minds. On Day Two, a student will share things they told friends about the class — how incredibly satisfying it felt to lace a wheel, the incomparable sensation as it comes together spoke by spoke — and how those friends couldn’t believe it when they heard it.
We know the feeling, though, don’t we? The buzz of creating something new from raw materials, and watching something ineffably yours come to life in your hands?
On Day Two of the class, each student returns to find a truing stand waiting in their cart alongside their wheels and their yesterday’s tools. Today is truing day, Emi announces; the anticipation hangs palpably.
The class begins with names and pronouns, followed by an icebreaker, and a short review to settle in. “Where’s your favorite place to ride in the summer?” Emi asks, and for a moment, conversation turns glowing with yearned-for utopias — dewy evenings and mountain paths, rugged trails and open skies.
“What did we measure on Tuesday?” Emi begins the refresher, and the familiar back-and-forth picks up as if our shining group of wheel builders had never left. They recall measuring the length between nuts (“yes! that’s the over locknut dimension!”) and the distance between the flanges (“that’s right!”). Even when no one remembers the spoke measurements, the mood remains bright. This part is only technical memory — but Emi’s gift is making the learning feel good, so that confidence builds naturally.
Attention is called to the truing stand, whose use is new to all but our other mechanic, Lauren. Still, where truing an already-built wheel is intuitive to seasoned BICAS mechanics — though itself a practiced dance of balancing adjustments between spokes, tightening one, loosening another to skillfully maintain existing tension — wheel building is another game. In these wheels, no balance yet exists, because all of the tension has yet to be added.
For now, the class listens raptly as Emi flags a common stumbling block — the change in a person’s perspective when looking through a wheel, as opposed to at it. Where the direction of spoke nipples during lacing was intuitive, tightening spoke nipples rather appears counterclockwise when approaching from above. “Expect to forget that a few times, and be patient with yourself,” Emi reassures; it’ll become muscle memory, after more practice.
We’re fifteen minutes into this second session when the students place their own wheels in the stand — a much swifter lead-in to the practical portion than Tuesday. With theory refreshed and tools in hand, the room settles quickly into deep focus. Wheels turn slowly, and spoke nipples rotate until only one thread on each is left visible.
BICAS is quiet, with only the soft murmur of the shop drifting in from beyond the classroom, where a few customers browse in the last quiet hours of the day. In the classroom, conversation rises and falls between long, gentle stretches of intense focus. Emi guides students through adding initial tension, and grasps a pair of parallel spokes. “Feel the tension,” Emi encourages; feeling for spots most obviously tighter than others. The sounds of tightening are soft as students pause to squeeze their spokes, tangibly feeling the difference. Emi circles the room, checking in, offering help where needed.
Students compare progress with another, testing by hand. (“May I feel your spokes?” “Feels perfect!”) Conversation drifts from spoke wrenches (the ones used are three-sided, but softer aluminum would call for four-sided) to physics (relying on the first ride to tension a wheel would risk twisting spokes out of true).
Through the deep focus, there remains a comfortable overtone. One student goes to fetch their seltzer. Another’s phone rings. Emi recalls a relevant lesson. “I was reading this wheel-building book, and it claimed a well-built wheel should never go out of true or break a spoke.” The room responds in a wave of awws.
It’s just before 4 when the class gather for the next demonstration, this time at Lauren’s stand. Emi gives the wheel a gentle spin. Spokes blur. At the faintest brush of the calipers, she pinches the spot between her fingers, tracking the motion back to where the rub begins. A half-turn adjustment to the spoke opposite the friction, another spin — and just like that, the wobble disappears, and the wheel spins smoothly. Another ripple of awe moves through the room. Now it’s the students’ turn: spin, listen, adjust, repeat — following the pattern until the rubbing stops and the wheels begin to find their balance.
Truing is intricate work. There’s a softness to the intensity that envelops the space yet again, as students turn their wheels, tighten spokes, ask questions.
With lateral truing — the side-to-side alignment — complete, Emi introduces the next dimension: radial truing, or the up-and-down balance that keeps the wheel round. Rims are always imperfect when they’re manufactured, she explains, giving a wheel a gentle spin with the calipers set beneath the rim. The wobble is again audible as the wheel rises and dips.
The class welcome this next phase, eyes level with their own spinning rims. “After radial truing, should I go back and check lateral again?” asks one student; the answer is yes. The balance of refining (and rechecking) between these two dimensions really highlights what makes wheel-building both an art and a science.
It’s time for the next step. The spokes, still flared slightly where they meet the hub, need to be seated against the flange. Emi offers a few methods of achieving this: whether squeezing opposite pairs of spokes together to flex them, or lacing a screwdriver through the triangles where spokes cross to nudge the spokes into place; the goal is to press inbound spokes toward the flange, and the outbound spokes away.
Once the class have done this, they’re introduced to the dishing tool. It is wide, sloping, and curved, and sits against the rim with a dip that hovers over the locknut. Emi calibrates the tool snugly against the drive side locknut, then flips the wheel to repeat it on the other side, demonstrating the difference. An open space gapes above the locknut on the non-drive side; a rear wheel-in-progress always favors the drive side, she emphasizes. The dishing tool measures the difference between the lean to each side, allowing the wheel to be centered evenly in the stand.
Students move between the dishing tool and the truing stand: tightening, checking, flipping, repeating, and gradually coaxing their rims ever closer to the center. Around 5 o’ clock, Emi suggests the midway break, once people feel close to happy with their dishing. This is met with a cheerful chorus of protests (“I can work on it during break!”); Emi reassures them there’s no need — dishing is a tricky step, and worth taking time for. But the whole class is in the groove, and break is pushed back another ten minutes to make space for that dedication.
At length, most do step away to chat, refill water, or take a breath. Only one student remains focused, chasing a little more perfection before rejoining the others for the remainder of the break. It’s approaching 5:30 when the class reconvenes.
With some still finishing dishing and others ready for the next step, Emi introduces the long-awaited spoke tensioning. “Don’t worry about rushing to get into it,” she assures the room; there’s plenty of time. The tension meter is flat, blue tool, with an easy grip and a meticulously numbered gage. Paired with a handy chart, it helps measure whether the tension of each spoke sits within the correct range. Too much tension stresses the components, risking cracks. Too little, and the spokes may loosen and snap.
Each student’s rim is unique, and that means each has its own quirks and subsequent needs. Emi adjusts her guidance accordingly, swift with solutions and suggestions as they work on tensioning.
By now, the wheels are looking gorgeous. After being trued, dished, and tensioned, what remains is the last major step: releasing stress. There are a few ways to do it, but one of the simplest is pressing the wheel against the ground, using one’s body weight to help the spokes settle fully into place.
When, after demonstrating with her body weight, Emi places the demo wheel back into the stand to check for final adjustments, the true is only slightly off — a sign that the work was well done. The force of stress-releasing has revealed only a few minor touch-ups are needed. These are from small shifts, as the spokes untwist under force, into perfect balance. Only those final, minute adjustments follow.
Soft creaking rises as students relieve stress from their wheels. Others are still fine-tuning their dishing.
Just after 6 in the evening, the first amongst this enterprising class steps back to a completed piece. A fully built, true wheel is no small feat. As other wheel-builders near their wheels’ completion, all the symmetrical elegance in the classroom is inspiring me.
The congratulations Emi offers are well-earned. While others finish the final steps, she inquires on this first student’s interest in filling out an anonymous demographic survey. It’s a form that all of our students and customers are invited to fill out, as anonymous responses support BICAS’ grant funding. Upon completion of the form, participants earn $16 in shop credit: good towards used parts, one used bike per year, up to half of each class’ tuition, and shop time in Community Tools.
“So, we can use the truing stands during Community Tools?” the participant queries. Emi confirms enthusiastically, with one caveat: wheel building is a specific creative niche; and not every mechanic on duty may be confident in it. Still, for those ready to work independently, the space and tools are available.
“I feel good about it,” the student beams, face shining with hard-earned confidence. The conversation spills easily into favored online tutorials (Emi recommends the Park Tool videos), tips, and the very pure, exhilarating joy of this whole process.
It’s a quarter after six when the last student wraps up, and still the bright spirit lingers. Lauren grabs a hub from the case, brimming with uncontained excitement to incorporate wheel building into the mechanics they perform regularly at BICAS. Emi lights up beside her (oh, she’s a fan of center lock).
As departing students offer thanks, jokes can be heard between them — because where will they possibly find space for the tools they just know they’ll be buying, now that they’ve caught the wheel-building bug? Plans seem to spin like newly built wheels in the truing stands of their minds.
By 6:30, with class time still to spare, this accomplished class of students leave, wreathed in the sweet conviction of what they’ve learned and accomplished. Emi and Lauren exchange grins, then slip naturally into debrief, the ever-reflecting BICAS Education Committee at work. They break down the evening, celebrating what went well, and considering what class elements could grow stronger next time.
The glow still feels tangible in the room. At the moment, the prospect of it fading feels impossible.
I can feel it again, as the warm memory threads itself beneath my keyboard, and I find myself smiling. In truth, at BICAS, we cannot adequately express the breadth of this — but thank you, to each of our brilliantly shining students for all your passion; and thank you, to Emi and Lauren for curating this class experience. Obviously, the art of wheel building is so much more special than the obscure niche some see it as; but it’s also a whole lot more than just an extension of our ethos of salvage and reuse. When you can create something that is unequivocally you, why choose a wheel from a factory line?
This Wheel Building course is typically held only a couple times a year. More regularly, you’ll find beginner and intermediate classes available: Basic Maintenance, Build-a-Bike, and Gear & Brake Clinics. For youth ages 9-13, our summer camps are currently open for registration.
Instagram is the best place to learn quickly which of our classes are coming up, and our newsletter is the best place to be notified. Come join us when the time feels right!