cyrano138

I guess it's probably useful to say why I want to build my own wheels and why I asked about it on the first place. There are three reasons:

1. I enjoy learning about bikes and prefer to build as much as I can from scratch.

2. I want a few more options for my own wheels. Sometimes it can be pretty tough to find exactly what you want, as others have mentioned. For example, I prefer wheels with fixed threads on both sides which, without looking at very expensive, hand built, boutique wheels can be hard to find or prohibitively expensive, especially if you're not looking for top of the line stuff.

So I'd like to be able to find the hub I like and lace it to the weinmann lp18s I also really like, with regular, straight gauge, 2mm spokes.

3. I really don't want to be a bike flipper. But. I like buying and working on older steel road bikes (and to a lesser extent older mtbs), and it's nice to have a reason to do it, even if I never actually make my money back.
Folks in my area don't care much about older steel road bikes, which are amazing in their own ways, but unless you're buying rare or relatively expensive ones, they're pretty heavy.
They do make really nice fixed conversions, though, and I think there is some interest in those, so, at least I can occasionally sell one or donate it and make someone happy and/or lose slightly less money on the whole thing.
My thought was to take older steel bikes that had alloy wheels and lace track hubs to them (instead of buying a new wheelset which makes it necessary to ask too high a price for the bike).
I wouldn't really have been too too surprised to find out that buying a wheel is more expensive than building it from the start, but I was definitely surprised to find out that lacing a new hub and spokes to an existing rim was still more expensive than just buying a new wheel.
So anyway, sorry for the long ramble. Just figured I'd explain the point of the initial post. I'm still going to start building wheels, but I guess I'll just have to do it because it's fun.