Wheels!

When the rims arrived, both were unpainted aluminum. Since this bike will not have caliper brakes (discs for me), I had them painted. The overall color scheme is red, white, and black. White powder coat was applied by a local shop with very nice results. Makes me want to paint my other bikes' wheels. 

I had the rear wheel laced at my local bike shop. Short spokes (I cut commercially purchased spokes and rethreaded them) go at crazy angles to the hub. I'm also a complete novice at building wheels. So...I chose the lace the big wheel myself and learn. After A LOT of online research and some guessing, I selected a 6 cross lacing pattern. Compare that to a typical 3 cross for regular bikes. It took around 3 hours to lace all 64 spokes and get it initially true. It was so nice to finally have both wheels. 

Front and rear. big and small. 

Spokes

It has been several months since my last post, but I've been busy with the project. I tried to find long spokes online, but none were available (www.unicycle.uk.com now has them).  Borrowing an Excel spoke length calculator, my 48" rim needed 560mm spokes. That's about twice the length of what you can find for sale. So, I had some tooling made and fabricated my own. Here are some photos. 

I purchased a box of straight 2mm stainless wire that was a few inches longer than the finished spokes. 

The first tool is a bend fixture to make the hub-end bend. 

A rubber mallet quickly makes the bend. 

Bent with the required extension. 

The next tool is a head forming tool. This is one half of the tool with the bent spoke inserted. 

Both halves of the tool clamped together in a vise. 

Heat the stub with an acetylene torch. The next step is to whack the forming tool with a hammer. 

Side view showing the formed head. 

Finish the straight end with a Hozan spoke threader. I learned to take it slowly even with the drill. Double-threading resulted when driving it fast. 

64 spokes later, I was ready to lace the wheel.