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Video: Watch Campagnolo's Mister Ghibli build a disc wheel by hand

Many cycling products are still made by hand, as Campagnolo shows in this video

It might be easy to think that the majority of cycling products these days are churned out by robots or outsourced to maintain profit margins, but as this rather beautiful video from Campagnolo shows, there is still some of the old hand-on approach to manufacturing alive and well in the cycle industry.

Campagnolo is a company proud with tradition, stating that its “most prized asset are the hands within its very own factory.”  In this video Mister Ghibli (real name Franco Rigolon) demonstrates a few stages of the assembly of a Ghibli disc wheel, and boy it looks like painstaking work. He has been a wheel builder with Campagnolo for over ten years though , so he certainly knows his way around a wheel.

As nice as the video is, and revealing as it is, we can't help feel they could have given a little more detail about the entire process of the wheel assembly, but we suppose they might be wanting to keep some things secret. 

David worked on the road.cc tech team from 2012-2020. Previously he was editor of Bikemagic.com and before that staff writer at RCUK. He's a seasoned cyclist of all disciplines, from road to mountain biking, touring to cyclo-cross, he only wishes he had time to ride them all. He's mildly competitive, though he'll never admit it, and is a frequent road racer but is too lazy to do really well. He currently resides in the Cotswolds, and you can now find him over on his own YouTube channel David Arthur - Just Ride Bikes

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cw42 | 9 years ago
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A feature in Rouleur and now a video on YouTube. Is there any part of the cycling world that hasn't been picked to death by the media? Great to see hand made stuff still being made by hand  1

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domthevom | 9 years ago
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That was my exact same thought!

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litespeeddavemira | 9 years ago
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How on earth does he true it up?

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SKH replied to litespeeddavemira | 9 years ago
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He aligns the rim to hub fixe in the jig before the glue sets, then bakes it in oven to fix it in that position.

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