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Question about wheel building: I stopped stressing over perfect spoke tension after a chat with an old timer in Tucson
I used to chase tension within 2 percent on every wheel and it would eat up my whole afternoon. Last month this guy named Ray at a shop off 4th Ave in Tucson watched me fuss over a rear wheel and just laughed. He said he built wheels for 30 plus years and only ever got close, then rode them hard for a week to let them settle. I tried it on my next three builds and they all stayed true, so I've stopped chasing the numbers quite so hard. Anyone else here build loose and then stress the wheel in after, or am I about to learn a hard lesson on a customer's bike?
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ivanross18h ago
That bit about Ray saying he "only ever got close" lines up with something I read in Jobst Brandt's wheel book years ago. He wrote that chasing perfect even tension is kind of a waste because the rim itself is never perfectly round or straight, so the tension numbers lie to you a little no matter what. He was big on getting it close, then squeezing the spokes hard in pairs to seat everything, then touching up the tension after. That squeezing part is the real trick and I bet that is what your week of hard riding is doing for you, just slower. The one thing I would watch is going too loose on the drive side of a rear wheel, because if those spokes drop below a certain point they go slack on every pedal stroke and that is where you get broken spokes and cracked rims over time. So yeah, build it close, stress it in, but keep a floor under the tension instead of just eyeballing it. On a customer's bike I would still squeeze and re-true before it leaves the stand, just so nothing settles on them mid ride.
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