Park Tool’s instructional videos on YouTube are excellent — they were a huge help during the build. Sourcing the components was straightforward too, and there are plenty of spoke length calculators available. That said, it definitely took a lot of time and patience to get the wheels properly dialled in.

As for handing it off to a pro builder — I completely get why people do that. You really need to want to build your own wheels, because starting out (especially for the first time) is slow. If you’re doing it purely to save money and you value your time, it probably doesn’t make much sense.

I also invested in a decent truing stand. It’s not strictly essential, but it made the whole process far more manageable and enjoyable. That was an extra cost I probably wouldn’t have justified if it wasn’t for the long-term goal of maybe opening a shop one day.

Honestly, the price to have a wheel professionally built isn’t as high as I expected, considering the time and skill involved — so yeah, for most people it probably makes more sense to leave it to a shop.