I’m pleased to report that my three Sugar wheel sets remain round, strong and beautiful. All of the configurations roll perfectly despite being put through the paces on my daily, year round commute, brevets and self-supported tours. In each case, I thought I knew exactly what wheels I wanted, but the subtle recommendations and build considerations you offered have proved ideal and admittedly better than what I came up with prior to planning with you. Thanks for your expertise, careful craftsmanship and keeping me in fine wheel sets.
D. Farnsworth,
Eugene, OR
This is a story that is awesome. Yup, it’s just that simple.
Last week this was posted on Bikeportland.org. It was a story about a woman whose awesome wheels were stolen from her bike. This set an awesome chain of events into action. The head of marketing from this company read the post and decided to “Get the wheel in motion” by donating awesome parts. He contacted this little wheel company to build the wheels and together we got this company to donate tires. At the end of the day this awesome thing happened and we all got a commuter rolling again:
Sometimes the hours get long when you’re building a business with uncompromising ideals and quality. That’s just how it is. But, it never stops us from playing a role in our community and investing in the next generation.
Every Wednesday morning, throughout the summer, the Community Cycling Center brings a group of youngins through the studio to learn about what I do as a wheel builder. Every week the questions are different and every week I hope as they leave my studio that they are inspired to follow their dreams.
This week, I got a note of appreciation from a parent. It meant a lot to me and I’d like to share it with you here:
My daughter came by your place today with her community cycling ctr camp group, and she hasn’t stopped talking about the visit. She even volunteered to patch my flat tonight. Just wanted to thank you for playing such an important role in inspiring future bike girls!
I was insanely inspired by a female plumber named Denise and throughout the 3rd grade I wanted to be a plumber. Today my admiration is sprinkled throughout the industry and engineers, in general, are the “Denise” of today. My hope is to always remain inspired to learn, to grow, to extend myself beyond what I’ve thought was possible.
Any chance we have to inspire the next generation of cyclists, mechanics, inventors and innovators we take it with gratitude.
We wheel builders in the world are most proud of our rough and tough hands and our finely tuned ears. It takes many hours of working with wheels to acquire these trophies proving that we have been honing and refining our skill, our craft.
But very few wheel builders have noted the “Wheel builders eye” which looks very much like “Drunken eye”. This phenomenon develops in a wheel builder from looking at the caliper on the truing stand hitting the rim telling where the wheel is out of alignment. The gap is so small (.1-.3mm) that one squints an eye much the way a drunk would inspect the bottom of a bottle to verify that there wasn’t any booze left.
So, this “Trophy” is fine and wonderful except for the severe wrinkling of only one eye. It’s a labor of love, that’s all that one can say. It’s the dedication and love of wheel builders the world over that are willing to make the daily sacrifice for the ride. Love your wheel builder. They’re going to look funny.
Below is a picture of a drunk after after 10,000 look-sees into the bottom of a bottle and a wheel builder after 10,000 wheels. One should note the uncanny similarities. These drawings are based on actual human beings. No wheel builder (or drunk) was hurt in the process.
when we started building wheels under our own label a couple years ago we had always imagined a ‘tasting room’ or demo program for hand-built bicycle wheels. the concept gained momentum in our minds for the following reason:
1. curiosity about the performance of a hand-built bicycle wheel wasn’t available for comparisson. how does a chris king hub perform? what about an ultegra hub? what’s the difference between bladed spokes and butted spokes? we felt that we could conceptually explain things but nothing is as good as the tangible experience.
2. the majority of the work we do is in matching riders to their ‘perfect ride’. we don’t just want to sell wheels to you, we want to work with you and get the right kind of spokes, the right number of spokes, the right hubs, and the correct rims. we also want them to be pretty to match the design of your bike and your aesthetic vision.
while a few have had the opportunity to make use of this program we are officially announcing the ‘brian palmer tasting room‘ open. on the link provided you’ll find a full ‘tasting menu’. be curious and come in to demo a new set of wheels.
currently, the wheels that you’ll find cater to road, cyclocross, and touring. options will soon be available for 29′er and 26″ mountain.
which leads us to this question: who is brian palmer? brian palmer is a self-proclaimed ‘wheel-a-holic’ and blogger extraordinaire. based in scotland, brian writes entries that verge on literature. insanely witty and humble in approach. his ideal wheel set is the crown jewel of our tasting room and lovingly named ‘the brian palmer. visit his blog here.
You know we’re committed to sustainability. We use a trailer to bike deliver our boxes to Fed Ex and we partner with vendors who choose sustainability: Rendered Clothing, Dharma Merchant Services, and Chris King (to name a few). But, did you know we have an official “Sustainability Box Plan” to help us REDUCE, RE-USE and then RECYCLE shipping boxes and packaging? We do. We thought we’d share the official top-secret plan with you here:
So let’s summarize the plan: We get boxes (and plastic shipping materials) because we get things in the mail. The boxes we can’t re-use we recycle or give to another small company, PLYWERK, that ships out their product to customers all over the world!!
Here’s what the owner of PLYWERK, Kjell Van Zoen, had to say about our partnership: ”We are always extremely grateful when any business is willing to take time out of their busy schedule to help conserve and reuse materials. Our ability to reuse packing materials is entirely dependent on businesses like Sugar Wheel Works. It’s awesome to think that we have built a mini symbiotic relationship to reduce waste and prevent unnecessary overproduction. Hopefully our relationship will be an example for other businesses to follow.”
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While we won’t always be perfect, we come in every day with a creative and willing attitude towards sustainability. Ideas and suggestions are always welcomed! Check out our partner, PLYWERK, here.
