Donnie those are looking very nice! Now that I have the process down I'm sure I could steamline the task in many ways. For example, as you say, I could cut all the spokes and even anneal them in batches instead of hand fitting each and every one. Heck, I could even made stocks of these for the future! Also I'd be able to make both wheels at the same time or at least in sync so that I could be doing the next step on one wheel while waiting for the other one to set-up. And of course there wouldn't be any of the mential anguish next time around. I can't tell you how many failed experiments and dead ends went into this!

I'm thinking I'll made good little stock on the hubs while I'm here and have these materials at hand. This hub size would work well for any size from around 4 1/2" to 7"

BTW, another advantage of this method for making the lip of the rim is that I don't have to groove the rim with a dremel tool. The bamboo rim is actually quite scale looking (I did a little research on rim cross-sections). I wasn't happy with the look of the carved wooden rim I made at first. It was also a bit deeper than I wanted it to be.

Here are some of the diagrams I knocked out in Photoshop that helped my get my head around this project: