Customer Reviews: Read 11 more reviews...
 The authoritative work on bicycle wheels August 9, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Despite Jobst Brandt's engineering background, the book is written in a pleasent, easy to understand, straight forward style. The illustrations are plentiful and beautyfull. Layout, illustrations, typography, subject matter and writing style are matching each other very well.This book is not only about building bicycle wheels, but also about understanding how the wheel works, and why some wheel designs are better than others. Jobst Brandt has performed a lot of experiments and therefore dispels a lot of myths based on research.The book is too terse in my opinion, regarding spoke length calculation and hub measurements. It is not that the information isn't there, but complete beginners, who perhaps aren't using math equations very often, must find it intimidating. In that regards, Roger Musson's ebook "Wheel Building" is much more practical and easy to understand.But Jobst Brandt's book is still better than any other source on wheelbuilding I know of.Finally, the most important myth Jobst Brandt dispels is that you have to some kind of special talent to build wheels. Jobst Brandt demonstrates that wheelbuilding can be easy and that everyone can do it with good results. So go get a truing stand and a spoke key and start to build your own wheels.
 No idea how to rebuild your Bikes wheel, this book will help May 19, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Having taken apart my mountain bikes wheel thinking it would be easy to fix, clean, and put back together, I found it an impossible task. This book solved that problem almost instantly, two attempts and the wheel has been rebuilt and it's working perfectly. That said, if you only need like I did to build/repair a wheel, thats only one chapter. The amount of technical detail contained is way over the top, and probably unneccessary for most people, not to mention the pages at the back of pure numbers, which I readily admit to having no clue what they relate to.
 Was great in 1993! February 14, 2007
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
I've had this book for well over a decade. Way back in the early ninties it was a great book. However, things move along and even if one does not like nor agree with the current deep dishes and low spoke counts the fact is that the upper end of the market has gone this way. And the low end of the market will seek to follow, abliet with many many more wheel failures than the high end. So what is my complaint? This is a book for the purist whom wants to put a wheel together from first principles and have a deep understanding of the what they are ridding on. While I commend those that wish to go that way and am myself not an advocate of counts below twenty-eight and deep dishes, the bicycle wheel is evovleing (or is it devolving?) and as such it is comon to buy paired and completed wheelsets. So even if these new wheels have quite a finite life span when compared to the "ultimate bicycle wheel" they are still "bicycle wheels" all the same. Thus in 2007 the "Bicycle Wheel" should cover the gamut of what is available and how to deal with the new (but perhaps "silly").
Good but I'd like an update and correction June 9, 2005
18 out of 19 found this review helpful
Unlike some reviewers who would like to see Brandt describe and bless novel spoking patterns, I concur with his recommendation of traditional spoking. The traditional tangent tension-spoked wheel is one of the most elegant and efficient structures ever devised. A wheelbuilder may choose a rim, hub and spokes at will and so, construct wheels of many kinds that are not available commercially. With skill and care, an amateur may build wheels of professional quality. The traditional wheel may be built to the desired degree of ruggedness vs. weight, and if damaged, can often be made usable with an emergency repair or adjustment.
Brandt's advice faces challenges from within the bicycle industry, which is always looking for a new selling point. Wheels with low spoke counts, trendy now (2006) are more tolerable with deep-section aero rims than with shallow rims and can make sense for racers, who are willing to sacrifice reliability for a very slight increase in performance -- but for most bicyclists, it is much more important not to get stranded or crash than to increase speed by half a percent.
Some of the newer types of wheels may sell because they look different, but provide little actual advantage. Wheels with thick aluminum or polycarbonate spokes decrease weight slightly but at a major expense in air drag. Graphite spokes have a very poor record of reliability and safety, though graphite-epoxy composite material has been used successfully in rims and in single-piece formed wheels. Still, brake shoes wear graphite-epoxy quickly, so a metal braking surface is preferable. Don't get me talking about paired spokes, which make a wheel look as if it has fewer spokes -- but require a heavier rim, because longer rim segments are unsupported. The inward pull of the spokes is, after all, about 10 times the lateral pull.
I have built some wheels with radial spokes, but I caught one with a cracked hub flange quite by chance shortly before it would have caused a nasty crash. Since that time I have been very careful which hubs I will spoke radially. As usual, Brandt is correct with his warning on this topic.
There is one serious error in Brandt's book, and I am astonished that it has not been corrected through 3 editions. A graph, on page 39 in the 3rd edition, shows the change in spoke tension with lateral loading of the rim. The left spokes are shown to go into compression. They can't, as they simply flex once they are slack. It might also be asked whether this graph reflects the influence of spokes that are differently stressed as the load is applied at the bottom of the wheel. To do so would require a more complicated mathematical model than I think Brandt was able to command.
I also disagree with Brandt's advice to tension spokes until the rim begins to deform. It can then deform further due to increased stresses during riding, and loosen the spokes. I have seen a new wheel which failed after a few miles for this reason. Spokes should be tight, but should leave a margin of safety. If the rim deforms before the spokes reach their optimum range of tension, then they are too thick for it, or it is too weak for them.
I would really like to see this book updated with today's more sophisticated finite-point analysis, including analysis of stresses in the novel low spoke-count wheels. But for people who are willing to build conventional wheels -- the better choice anyway for most cyclists -- this book is a valuable and fairly comprehensive reference.
The Bible January 15, 2005
10 out of 12 found this review helpful
Jobst Brandt may be an extremely cranky on-line persona, but this book is the best guide to how bicycle wheels work. The section on theory is clear and easy to read. I was able to lace, true and ride a wheel based on the instructions found here.
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