Wheel building 101

[Ed no-more-lemons]

This is where I am seriously toying with the idea of cannabilising a perfectly good wheel for the rim which I sourced to replace the Weinmann 27 inch article that got twisted by a pothole last autumn.

Having trued up several of my own wheels I am not unduly daunted by this, but am looking for a few pointers as I have never actually built a wheel, these are.
1. Is it possible to rig up a home made dishing tool and how? I seem to remember reading somewhere that some sort of oversized hinged caliper is the ticket.
2. is there any reason not to use the donor wheels spokes in a four cross pattern, when they are currently configured in a three cross pattern. They look to be the right length as the donor wheel does not have a large flanged hub unlike the original one.(saves a good few quid as 308mm spokes seem a bit scarce these days)
3 bound to have forgotten other conciderations that will hopefully come back to me by the time I have removed both freewheels(hopefully).

Like I say any advise gratefully received apart from resorting to the LBS.

 

[Spoked Wheels]

1. Yes, I think youtube has a video on that.

2. If the spokes are the right length then the only reason I can think of is if the original wheel had loose spokes as that would accelerate metal fatigue, precipitating spoke failure. By the way why do you need 4 x pattern?

 

[Ed no-more-lemons]

1. Yes, I think youtube has a video on that.

2. If the spokes are the right length then the only reason I can think of is if the original wheel had loose spokes as that would accelerate metal fatigue, precipitating spoke failure. By the way why do you need 4 x pattern?

I think I need to go 4 x pattern as the damaged wheel is this way on a high flanged hub and the donor rim is attached to a 'normal hub' in a 3 x configuration. both wheels appear to have spokes of 308mm, although I need to double and triple check the spokes from the donor wheel(which looks to be pretty tidy)