Handbuilt Wheels

Custom Hand Built Wheels

View some of our recent custom wheelbuilds in our gallery

One of our handbuilt wheels is reviewed in the November 2016 issue of Velovision Magazine

Our Wheels

We specialise in building wheels with Hub Gears (internal gear hubs), dynamos and drum brakes.

We are also good at building ‘regular’ road, mountain, hybrid and folding bike wheels.

Our Wheelbuilder, Ric is Alf Webb Trained and qualified (The Bike Inn) so your wheels will be straight, well-built and long-lasting.

Ric, like any excellent wheelbuilder, has superb attention to detail. All wheels built here are properly de-stressed before reaching the customer. This means that your wheels will not need re-truing after the first ride on them. They will last you a very long time.

Tools

The very best quality tools are used to make your wheels. More than one wheel jig is often required to build a wheel. Most wheels are built on Park Tool TS2 and Alf Webb jigs with precision tools such as the DT Swiss spoke tension meter and Sapim spoke keys and nipple tools.

Hub Gears

Choose from hubs such as Shimano Alfine and Nexus, Rohloff Speedhub, Nuvinci N380, SRAM and Sturmey Archer.

Dynamo Hubs

We stock dynamo hubs from Shimano, Schmidt, Supernova, SP and Sturmey Archer.

Drum, Coaster & Roller Brakes

We can build Sturmey and Shimano drum and roller brake hubs and Coaster Brake hubs into virtually any rim for you.

Regular Wheels

Custom wheels for road and mountain bikes can also be built using hubs from manufacturers such as HOPE, Shimano, Campagnolo, Chris King, Phil Wood track hubs, Paul, White Industries, Halo, Miche and Sturmey Archer.

Rims

We generally use Rigida and Mavic rims depending on the type of wheel required and its intended usage. We can also source many other rims such as DT Swiss, Velocity, H Plus Son, Brompton, Sun Ringle, Halo, Westwood & Ambrosio – feel free to enquire if you don’t see your favourite rim/type/brand listed.

Spokes

Top of any wheelbuild requirements is usually the excellent Sapim range of spokes. However we also use and stock others such as Alpina, DT Swiss and Halo.

Order Custom your custom handbuilt wheels from Practical Cycles:

Simply send an email or use our contact form. Please provide us with some basic information; this will enable us to provide you with a personalised (no obligation) quotation for your wheels.

If you are unsure of exactly what rim, hub or spokes you need we can get started if you provide the following information:

>primary use for the wheels e.g. – light touring, heavy loaded touring, MTB, gravel riding, road riding, cargo bike etc…

>Size of wheels – e.g. – 26″, 700c, ’29er’, 20″, 24″, Brompton etc…

If you are more certain of what you want, the above information plus type of hub, axle type, dropout width (especially for rear) type of rim, type of spoke, width of tyre, spoke count, colours, etc will help us get you a more accurate quotation first time around.