Correct lacing means that you got the 3 cross patter correct and all the spoke groups look the same. The labels on the hub and rim are lined up.
It means that you can read the hub label through the valve hole.
The job today is to put the hub from the left into the rim on the right using the spokes and nipples shown.
As with most things I do, the funky strange old wheel on the left has a story. Its history is sort of the origin story for the wheel truing algorithm. The story has romance, nostalgia, scientific curiosity, patience and persistence. The wheel in the picture has a thin, box-section Mavic rim for tubular tires, high-flange Normandy hubs, and galvanized steel spokes. This is a weird combination, even for a wheel from the 70’s which this one is. The new rim is a Mavic A719 drilled for 36 spokes. Mavic no longer lists this rim in their US catalog. Fortunately I found a pair in stock at ProWheelBuilder.com. It seem like providence that the old Mavic should be replaced by the new Mavic and that it too is an extinct species.
Back to the wheel story, which is my bike story. My first encounter with 10 speed bikes and someone who knew about them was in college. My roommate was a bike geek before it was cool. He had a nice Peugeot that he rode everywhere. This bike met an untimely end when a car pulled out from a blind side street as my roommate was coming down a hill. He did a bug splat on the left front fender and rolled over the top of the car, mostly uninjured. The Peugeot curled into the bicycle equivalent of fetal position and died. When he got some insurance money, he was in the market for a new bike. This is where I learned the finer points of bike buying in 1972l He said the best bikes were made in Italy and France. He said you should always replace the rim on a standard mass-produced bicycle with a tubular rim. It was the single best upgrade for a bike he said. At the time, standard clincher rims were single wall steel and were pretty dismal in just about every respect. Also, he said the bike shop guy would respect you for knowing this and would give me a good deal. My roommate ultimately bought a Bianchi with Campy group. It was of course the classic Bianchi blue green color, recognizable from miles away. The day he brought the Bianchi to the apartment, he also brought a can of Krylon black spray paint and proceeded to give the bike the ugliest paint job possible to disguise its pedigree. When he rode it to class, he carried a huge hardened steel chain wrapped around his waist. The chain weighed much more than the bike.
A few years later, when the mid 70’s bike fad was at its strongest, my wife and I decided to buy bikes. We spent her first paycheck from her new job as the French teacher at Holy Cross High School on these bikes. That's the romantic part. The bike shop guy, Randy, was a true, Breaking-Away bike guy. He was short wiry and was thoroughly immersed in bikes. He was not the owner but he ran the shop. He helped my wife and me pick out two bikes, a Raleigh Grand Prix for me and a Raleigh Record for her. These were the bottom two models in the Raleigh line. Raleigh, at the time, was the dominant bicycle company in the world. They made all kinds of bikes. These two bikes were lugged steel frames, but the tube material was carbon steel and the tubing was not butted. These bikes were strong but not lightweight or high end to anyone then or now. I asked Randy for the upgrade in rims. Randy looked surprised because this would be kind of the opposite type of wheels appropriate for this boat anchor of a bike. Nevertheless, he said he had a pair of Mavic tubular rims that he had bought for himself but had decided not to use. I could have those for the price of the rims. He would build them up for free. Turned out this was a mistake for him. He told me when I came to pick up the bikes that the he could not use the spokes from the original build and had a hard time finding spokes the right length. He thought the ones he found would work. He did not charge me for the spokes. Knowing what I know now about bike guys like him, I should have paid him anyway. The spokes were galvanized, double-butted spokes the right length (maybe a millimeter too long). Like most spokes of the era they were bad, and, as it turns out, they were the cause of my early efforts in wheel maintenance and truing. As Jobst Brandt told his bicycle wheel story, he learned about good bicycle wheels from the bad wheels that he bought and maintained in the 70’s. The spokes were the weak point of these wheels. The steel was soft and easily fatigued. I broke many spokes. At first I took the wheels back to Randy for spoke replacement and truing. Money was always tight and there was a thing in biking that said you were supposed to fix your own bike. So I took a flyer at truing the wheel after a spoke replacement using the brake caliper as a truing guide. It took me forever and when I stopped, it wasn’t so much because the wheel was true, it was just that wheel wasn’t getting it any better. To ride it, I had to open up the brake caliper so it didn’t rub and then had to be really careful braking on the downhills of western Virginia because the brake levers bottomed out. Me, being the mathematically inclined engineer, thought to myself, I bet there is an equation for this. That is the scientific curiosty thing. I kept this thought in the back of my head (actually written in a notebook of fun math problems I wanted to solve) until I retired forty years later and had time to work on it. I worked on the algorithm in most of my free moments for three years until the last equation was figured out and the computer program ran. I still have tweaks, additions, and corrections that I find. That is the persistence part.
The tubular front wheel wheel from the Raleigh was the third one I trued using truing algorithm. The nipples were really hard to turn without winding up the spoke so it was difficult true but I got it in shape. When I tried to true the rear wheel of the set I broke a spoke that was frozen to the nipple. So, I set the wheels aside and promised myself to rebuild completely someday. At the time, I was focused on checking and refining the algorithm.
I should note that after forty-five years, I still have both the Raleigh bicycles and the wife who paid for them. When we were moving out of the home where were raised our children, the bikes were still in the garage. I asked if she wanted me to give them away. She said no, not yet. That’s the nostalgia part.
A few years later, we have grandchildren and they have bikes. I was talking to a bike shop owner who I knew from his website used to be a Raleigh dealer in the 70’s. I asked him if he still had is Wittworth wrenches and if he could put our old Raleigh’s back in working order. He said he had someone who could do it. Her name is Rita. I told Rita that our bikes had not been abused. My wife’s had very few miles. We rode on nice Saturdays and Sundays until she got pregnant. I don’t think she has ridden it since. I used hers for about a year commuting. I rode mine lot for a few years, then occasionally, then just the rare commute to work. I told Rita that these bikes had been garage queens. They needed cleaning and new cables, chains, brake pads, and tires. The Grand Prix wheels needed to be rebuilt but I really wanted to do that myself. She put them in good order and I have been riding both of them.
That is where we are today. I am building these wheels and the next thing I will do is pick up some wire cutters.
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