and the front wheel

After my previous post about my troubles on the rear wheel, you might think I would have given it a rest before attempting the front, but I leave that kind of thing to sensible people. Instead, having made as many mistakes on the rear as I did, I figured I had learned enough to make a ready attempt at the front wheel.

Apparently I had; this one went together in a little under two hours, and I was also attending to something else at the time. This time, I remembered to pay attention to the dish as well as the lateral and radial true (and the whole business was much easier, as the hub is symmetric, with the same sized spokes on both sides).

Friend Dave C took me to task for doing the harder one first, but it's my way to do so; I'd rather get the toughest job done soonest, and then I feel like I can coast. He also indicated he would be skeptical until he saw pictures. I didn't take pictures of the parts or the process... but here are the black Vuelta Corsa Super-Lites that are coming off:

Here's the Yellow Maserati, with the new back wheel. Note the shiny, silver-colored hub and rim, and the tried-and-true 32-spoke-3-cross pattern:

The new front wheel, with the daring-but-sound 28-spoke-2-cross lacing:

... and the wicked Pedro's spoke wrench, turned up so you can see the jagged edges that brought my poor hands to such grief. It can handle three sizes of nipple; the careful eye will note the different colors of nail polish with which I marked the three sides (you can see the green and red; there's also blue. Aren't I slick?*):

*Well, no, I'm not. If I were that slick, I would have used a spoke wrench that didn't hurt so much.