Latest Custom Builds — Gravel

Rob wanted two pairs of wheels for his touring and commuting bikes. Both needed dynamo hubs on the front, and he wanted utmost reliability for the rear hub. Ideally standard ball bearings and cones, and a steel freehub. The Shutter Precision PD-8 hub fit the dynamo need perfectly. They are inexpensive, robust, and work well. Also well supported here in Australia. The Shimano Deore XT hub is the perfrect rear touring hub. It's very well made, the bearings are beautiful (and easily serviced) and the freehub is steel, so super tough and resistant to the gouging that can occur with...

Dan gets around Melbourne on his Specialized Crux CX bike and needed some new wheels to replace the heavy original wheelset. Being a bigger guy, we discussed the pros and cons of alloy, deep road carbon, and narrower width 29er hoops, and after some consideration the Nextie Premium Asymmetric 27mm carbon 29er rim was selected. It would be a perfect match for the 38c CX tyres that he likes to run. He appreciates quality and it took no time for him to realize that the White Industries XMR hubset is a killer deal. They are light, super tough, and the finish is...

Gavin has an old school custom 29er. Back from the days when the geometry was still being tried and tested, but yet to be fully refined. It's fair to say that process did take some years to come to the stable, yet still quite nimble 29er geometry that exists today. His old ride has quite short top tube, and he decided to convert it to a monstercross (big tyre gravel) bike, as the geometry would be perfect for that, and he has a lot of old parts lying about. The only snag was that he didn't have a rear wheel...

Following a recent driveway catastrophe (involving a wheel, a car and concrete) a new front wheel was required. We searched through our old stock and found this new Magura Pro front hub. These were made for Magura by Hugi in the days before DT Swiss purchased the hub company. In fact, it's still quite commonplace for DT Swiss to manufacture hubs for other brands - Roval, Bontrager and Giant are notable. The Magura Pro is a silver Hugi 240 (DT Swiss 240s) and a prefect gravel hub (now that most MTBs have moved across to 15mm thru axles. Laced onto THE...

We built some wheels for Calvin some time ago. He claims they are the only wheels he's owned that have never required any attention. We're happy with that! This time Calvin needed a pair of bikepacking and gravel wheels for his new ride. We discussed at length the differing options, and Calvin was really keen to ensure utmost reliability. As a result, we decided the White Industries CLD hubs were a natural choice - super reliable, super tough and absolutely beautiful! For rims, the Spank Oozy Trail 295 was selected. Such a versatile rim! We have been using these rims for purposes from XC...