Lacing a wheel hinges on getting the first steps right. Everything else follows from here. Take a comfy seat with a cup of tea readily to hand, and place the rim on your lap with the spoke hole opposite you. You'll notice that the spoke holes are staggered up and down - position the rim so that the hole to the right of the valve hole is lower than the one to the left. Hold the hub in the middle of the rim with its right-hand end down.

Time to start putting spokes in. The first set are the "inbound" spokes. These'll end up with their heads on the outside of the hub flange. Drop a spoke of the correct length (this is the left side of the wheel) into alternate holes in the hub flange, then feed the threaded end of one of them into the spoke hole to the left of the valve hole and thread a nipple on to it. Just do it up three or four turns for now.

Work around the wheel putting the rest of the set of spokes in every fourth hole and threading nipples on to them. Each of these spokes should end up in a hole that's offset upwards. If they don't, you've done something wrong...

Now you need to do the inbound spokes on the opposite side. On rear or disc brake wheels these'll be a different length so make sure you're using the right ones. Turn the wheel over so the valve hole is still away from you with one of the first set of spokes in the hole now to its right. Drop spokes into alternate holes on the new upper flange, but make sure they're the right alternate holes - the flanges are offset so the holes on the left aren't directly opposite the ones on the right. You're looking for the holes to the right of the ones occupied by spokes - just push a spoke through parallel to the hub to figure it out.

Take the spoke that's in the hole to the right of the very first spoke you put in and put the threaded end through the next hole to the right in the rim. This should be a hole away from the valve hole. Go around the wheel putting each of the second lot of spokes into the holes to the right of the ones occupied by the first spokes and put nipples on them.

So far so good. Now move on to the outbound spokes. If the spokes are quite a snug fit in the flanges, drop them all through the lower flange before turning the wheel over (remembering that these are left-hand spokes out of the other pile again...). Then turn the wheel over and flatten the spokes out. If they're a bit of a loose fit they'll all fall out when you turn the wheel over unless you grab a handful of them. One way or another, you're looking for spokes with the heads in on the left-hand flange which should be upwards.

So far all the spokes have been lying radially. But in the finished article they're tangential to the hub flanges. This is where that happens. Hold the rim and twist the hub anticlockwise. The first spoke you put in (to the left of the valve hole) should be pulling away from the valve hole. Make sure that all the spoke nipples drop into the holes in the rim properly.

Now thread the crossing spokes, which are the ones currently not attached to the rim. We're doing a three-cross wheel, so each of these spokes needs to cross over three others. Take one and aim it in the opposite direction to the others. The first crossing is over the inbound spoke in the flange hole immediately to its left. The second is over the next inbound spoke round, and the third is under the next inbound spoke again. Then put the threaded end of the spoke through the next empty hole past the last spoke you crossed. There'll be a spoke from the other side of the hub between the last crossed spoke and the one you're threading. Don't worry, it'll make sense when you do it for real... Go around and thread all the spokes in the same way.

Repeat the last two steps for the other side of the wheel. It's easy to identify the relevant rim holes now, as there aren't many left. With everything in place your wheel should look a bit like this, with the valve hole between two roughly-parallel spokes and all the spokes on one side of the hub going into rim holes offset to the same side. If it looks all asymmetrical or some of the spokes wouldn't reach you've done something wrong...

If all is well, grab a screwdriver and use the handle to push the outermost spoke crossings in towards the hub. This'll make sure that the spoke nipples are all seated and that everything's even on both sides of the wheel.

In theory, the rim was round and straight before you laced it up, so as long as you keep all the spokes evenly tensioned it should stay round and straight. It won't, but if you pay attention to tensioning it'll be very close. Start by tightening all of the nipples so there's the same amount of thread showing on each.

Finally, start at the valve hole and work around the wheel tightening the spokes a turn at a time. Don't look at the spokes end on - there's a chance they'll break as you tighten them and shoot out of the rim. Put a rim strip on if you've got one handy. You'll need it when you're finished anyway. Keep tightening the spokes until they're as tight as your comparison wheel.

At this point you should have a correctly-laced, evenly-tensioned wheel that's generally fairly round and straight. All that remains is to tweak out those final few wobbles

 

Wheel truing basics

From hearing people go on about wheel truing you'd think it was some sort of black magic, with practitioners relying on mysterious incantations and foul-smelling potions to transform the wobby wheel back to miraculous straightness. Well, it isn't. There's a knack to it, but there's nothing mysterious about the process. Anyone can true a wheel. It's a good idea not to start out by trying to straighten out wheels made with swanky parts, though. Try and find an older, tattier wheel to practise on, then move on to your good stuff when you're confident

 

There's only one essential tool for wheel truing - the spoke key. There are plenty to choose from although the Spokey shown here is our favourite for reliable nipple engagement and ease of use. The important thing is to make sure you're using the right sized key. Most wheels have 14 gauge nipples, while lightweight wheels may have 15 gauge nipples. Using the wrong sized key is a quick route to rounded-off nipples aplenty, which is as bad as it sounds.

The only other thing you need is some way of telling which way the wheel's wobbling, and where. The best way of doing this is with a wheel truing stand - this is a Park TS-7. A truing stand lets you sit comfortably, see what you're doing and generally make a better job of things. The downside is that they cost money (lots of money in the case of the heavy-duty professional models) that you might not wish to spend for the sake of occasional wheel-truing duties.

The cheap-and-cheerful alternative to a pukka truing stand is your bike. Stick it in a workstand so the wheels will spin and there you go. Use a rubber band or some Blu-Tac to stick some kind of pointer (an Allen key or a pencil or something) on the stay and you're sorted. If you're out in the middle of nowhere and have rim brakes, you can just use them to show where the wobbles are. Whatever you use to true the wheel, it makes things a lot easier if you take the tyre off first.

 

Wheels are pre-stressed structures - they rely on tension in the spokes to keep them in shape. The tension in the spokes varies as the wheel rotates and as it rolls over things. The idea is that the static spoke tension is sufficiently high that even when loaded the spokes don't actually go slack. If they go slack the nipples can unwind and the spokes become loose, which makes the wheel go out of true. So to make it straight again, we need to adjust the spoke tensions which we do by turning the spoke nipples.

The first thing to get your head around is which way to turn them. To tighten a spoke nipple, you need to turn it clockwise looking at the spoke end-on, ie from where the tyre would be. Although don't actually look at it end-on, as occasionally a spoke will break as you tighten it and half a spoke may ping through the rim at high speed.

 

Right, down to business. Put your wheel in your chosen stand and move the pointer so it just clears the sidewall of the rim. Spin the wheel and peer intently at the gap betwixt rim and pointer. With any luck you'll be able to see that it's generally straight with a couple of wobbles in it. Spin it back and forth until you've identified the biggest wobble. It doesn't matter if it's wobbling towards or away from the pointer.

 

You'll notice that the spokes are staggered either side of the centreline of the rim with the spokes coming from the right hub flange being offset to the right and vice versa. To bring the wobble back into line, first check to see if one of the spokes near the wobble is a lot looser than the others. If it is, tighten it until it's somewhere near and check the wobble again.

To move the rim over to the left, tighten the spokes on the left side 1/4 turn and loosen the ones on the right by the same amount. Work on four spokes at a time, two in each direction. Try to keep all the nipples aligned so that the spoke key is either perpendicular or parallel to the rim - it makes it easier to judge how much you're adjusting them. If your wheel has butted spokes, they're likely to twist as you tighten them. To get around this, turn the nipples slightly too far and then back them off to the desired position.

 

 

Spin the wheel again and the wobble should have got smaller. If it's still the biggest wobble, repeat the tightening/loosening thing until another wobble becomes bigger. Repeat the procedure, always working on the biggest wobble. In theory if you tighten and loosen spokes by equivalent amounts the wheel should stay round, but chances are that it'll develop a bit of a 'hop' with high and low points around the circumference. So when the lateral trueness is looking good, move the pointer so it's across the rim and check for up-and-downiness.

Correcting hops is a similar theory to correcting wobbles, except that instead of tightening and loosening opposing spokes, you tighten (or loosen) left and right spokes together. If part of the rim bulges outwards, tighten the spokes at the bulge. If part of it drops inwards, loosen them. Start at the highest (or lowest) point and adjust the spokes either side of that point 1/2 turn and the ones outside of those 1/4 turn. Spin the wheel, check and repeat.

 

Once your roundness is good, go back and check for wobbles again. If they're both good, make sure the wheel's still dished right, that is, that the rim is exactly in the middle of the hub as it ought to be on nearly all bikes (there are some bikes with asymmetric rear ends that need the rim to be aligned differently but these are both rare and a pain in the bum, so we'll ignore them). The easiest way to check this is by simply taking the wheel out of the stand, flipping it over and putting it back in. The rim should be the same distance from the pointer both ways around. If you're lucky enough to have a dishing tool (supplied with some truing stands), then you can use that.

If your wheel is significantly off to one side but straight, simply go all the way around the wheel tightening spokes on the side towards which it needs to move and loosening them by the same amount on the other. Start and finish at the valve hole to ensure you do all of them. Adjust by 1/4 turn at a time unless it's miles out. Keep checking and repeating, then once it's correct go back and check trueness and rounditude.

The last step is to go around the wheel grasping pairs of parellel spokes and squeezing them hard - gloves help. This is vital on a newly-built wheel with new spokes as this does all sorts of clever and useful things that you can't see. On a just-trued wheel it may not do anything if you've managed to avoid spoke twist as you adjust them, but doing this will make any twisted spokes untwist. This'll make the wheel go out of true again, but better now than the first time you ride it. Go back and correct any errors and repeat.