Wheelworks.co.nz, Handbuilt wheels by Tristan Thomas

I had a small shipment of Kinlin XR-270 rims arrive today. These rims are the little-brother to the XR-300, aka “Niobium 30″ rims which have been very popular and have proven to be a versatile, stiff and durable rim.

The XR-300′s are 29.9mm deep and average 460 grams each (true weight) whereas the XR-270′s are 27.2mm deep and my shipment averaged 448 grams. Visually they’re almost identical and they look good as a ‘mismatched pair.’

My thinking behind this rim is that for lighter riders it will work well as a front and rear rim, or medium weight riders can use it as a front rim when paired with a XR-300 rear. For heavier riders, cyclocross and super durable training wheels then the XR-300 will stay as my preferred rim. I’ve got stock in 20, 24 and 28 hole.

(Edit July 2010.)  Testing with my lateral stiffness jig and 2 years of building with these rims has shown that the XR-270 has virtually the same lateral stiffness as the XR-300 and as a result I use the XR-270 for most purposes.

I’ll be building a pair of these in the next few days and I’ll post some photos of the complete wheelset (and the nice Bianchi they’ll be attached to)

For more info the Kinlin rims have a look at Tech Info on the Kinlin Range of Rims

XR300 (left) and XR270 (right)

This Saturday Owen and I headed over to Masterton to ride a loop we’d mapped out on google Earth: A loop out to Riversdale Beach on the East coast followed by a few kms of gravel roads on dubious quality and joining up with the Tour of Wellington route at Westmere. Owen rode his fixed-gear Langster with 23c tyres and I took my Surly Cross Check with 28c tyres.

It was a foggy drive to Masterton but after saying hello to the guys at Happy Valley Cycles most of it had burned off and we jumped on the bikes and headed for the coast. The sun was out and there was not a hint of wind, which since we both live in Wellington was quite strange and it took us some time to get accustomed :-) The roads out to Riversdale were excellent and with the exception of some boyracers in a back-firing Levin we had them to ourselves.

We reached Riversdale in just under 1h45m and it was about time to have some lunch, enjoy the view, and check the map to see where to next.

We headed back in-land for a few km’s then turned South onto Homewood road…according to the map this was paved for the first few kms and reasonably flat before turning to gravel, heading inland and climbing abruptly to 300m. The views of the coast on one side of the road and the hills on the other were breathtaking…this really is a beautiful part of the world. As promised the road quickly turned to gravel, but not normal gravel: big chip, deep gravel sprayed on a washboard, potholed road. Owen muttered something about his straight-blade aluminum road fork not being ideal for such road conditions, but Owen whines about a lot of things so I simply ignored him :-p

Just after Homewood the road turned inland and started to climb and before we knew it we were in Kummerstein. Yes, Kummerstein. From here the road turned into a wet, soggy 10.5% gravel climb. Right on cue Owen started whining again, this time about his 79″ fixed-gear being a bit big for wet, soggy, 10.5% gravel climbs…I kindly suggested he investigate some of the new technology in bicycles called “derailleurs” which allow the rider to select a gear suitable for such climbs, but being the hard-man that he is he simply rode up the climb at about 6rpm, stopping occasionally to utter curse words and excuses for losing rear wheel traction. This climb was soul destroying: It went on and on with no clues as to when it was going to ease up and it was nestled into the side of the hill which hadn’t received sunlight all day so was still wet from the previous week of rain.

Finally it ended. I think that we both would have cheered if we had any energy left to do so, but instead we had a quick bite to eat, checked the map again and placed bets on how many more kms of gravel were left to ride. From here we had a long gradual gravel descent before rejoining the undulating paved road at Westmere and creeping up that damn steep climb they use in the Tour of Wellington before dropping down into Gladstone. From here we turned North and with very little daylight remaining took turns pulling into the headwind towards Masterton. My legs were pretty much gone by this point and I don’t think Owen’s were doing much better, so it was slow, painful work but after watching the kilometers tick away we finally arrived back at the car: 131km, 1560m climbing and just under 6.5h including lunch stops. After dinner and a pint at the Green Man it was back to Wellington to get the mountain bike ready for the next mornings ride….

These beautiful hubs arrived this week for a customer’s restoration-fixie project:

The quality of these hubs is exceptional; the lockring and cog threads are precision cut, the bearings are US-made, and the polished finish is almost like chrome.

Phil offer about a thousand different variations of their hubs including low- or high-flange, a multitude of widths, and of course a wide range of spoke-counts with the ability to custom drill the flanges if needed.

These particular hubs are a high-flange 32h model with the optional slots machined into the flanges. They’ll be laced to a pair of Jalco 27″ rims which are currently enroute from the UK and fitted to a resorted Gillet frame. I’m excited about this project as it’s not often that I get to build 27″ wheels and the finished bike should be something really special.