Make or buy wheels?

With the frame on order (a six week lead time for the S&S coupler installation) I've just been sitting around thinking about other parts of the building process.  We've already figured out that we'll be using 26" wheels, but the question then is - which ones?

More importantly, should I...
   ...choose wheel sets from the internet,
   ...get someone to build some wheels for me,
   ...or build them myself?

Back to the interwebs.

Surprisingly (sarcasm font implied), there are arguments over what is the best book on building bike wheels.

The encyclopedia of wheel building is apparently the book by Jobst Brandt: The Bicycle Wheel, which is now in its 3rd edition. Brandt is an engineer who is apparently quite opinionated (imagine that) and calls BS on much of the trendy wheel design in industry. Although I liked a lot of the book reviews and the fact that Brandt gets into the real engineering of wheels - I decided to pass on this book as I wanted to just get down to a "what should I do" level.

After some mucking about, I ended up getting Professional Guide to Wheel Building, by Roger Musson.  This is an e-book (which could be handy on the road), that you can buy directly from Roger at www.wheelpro.co.uk.  It was about $15 (I haven't looked at what foreign exchange rate we got - the book is priced on line in English pounds, so your price may vary). I've read the book through (once) and it seems to be a no-nonsense guide to putting together a wheel, without a lot of extraneous stuff.

Seems to me the best reason for building the wheels myself is that I'll then really understand my wheels, so if there's a problem while touring I should be able to fix them myself.  The best argument against is that I might make a complete mess of it.

After reading Musson's book, I think I can do this - with a little patience and probably a fair bit of time.  The good thing about the process is that if you screw it up you just unlace all the spokes and start over.  I'm looking forward to building my own wheels. I'll let you know how it goes.