I like building my own wheels for the satisfaction of it. I know it's cheaper to buy them off the shelf. However, the last shop built wheel I had, I check with a Park tensometer. It ranged from 17 to 24!

How accurately do you build your wheels?
Tension range?
Lateral?
Vertical?
Dish?

I'm down to about 7.5%
0.1mm
0.25mm
0.025mm.

just ping the spokes with a plastic knife till they all sound right like I do, then you don't need to worry about what the tensiometer says 🙂

Tension meters are a waste of time IMHO. That level of trueness is fine, as long as all the spoe tension is even. Pinging the spokes and evening the tension by ear is the best way. Remember to take the twist out of the spokes and de stress loads. They should not need a bedding in period if you do it properly.

Beeen building my own wheels since I was 12 (now nearly 40) I've never used a tension meter just check tension by feel.

Lace up and nip the spokes up to the rim , then make sure they're true vertically the slowly make sure they're true laterally, de-stress regularly and keep checking the vertical.

As mentioned you could buy cheaper but I find wheel building therapeutic and love the buzz of taking a newly built set round the local wood.

My ear's not great, which is why I use the tension meter. I know the measured value counts for nothing but I find it useful to see that they're all of a similar value. I know on the park website, they say plus or minus 20%.

Okay, decided to slop playing with it now. I traded off some of the trueness for even tension and setted at

lateral 0.15mm
round 0.4mm
dish 0.05mm

tension plus or minus 4.77%

Did plenty of stress relieving on it but was pleased not to get too much pinging. Now lets see how it holds up! (when my shoulder is bette and I'm allowed out riding again).

How are you managing to measure dish to 0.05mm?

Setting up the dishing stick flush with one side and then using a feeler gauge down the gap and dividing by two. I know the dish measurement will be effected by the lateral error but to minimise this I've taken the dish reading as far away from the point on the rim that gave the lateral reading.

I guess I should be saying 0.05mm plus or minus the lateral error (0.15mm)

I wouldn't normally be this sad (or maybe I would) but I've got a grade 1 ac separation of the left shoulder right now and this forced inactivity is driving me loopy!

grade 1 AC separation – mtfu and get back riding.

Its enough already.
If wheel building stops becoming enjoyable then i'll stop.
Its a art,(ok a bit pompus) bit its about the feel. If you build wheels like a machine then you might as well buy machine built wheels.
May i also suggest a bike ride:+)

Obi_Twa – Member

grade 1 AC separation – mtfu and get back riding.

Bad advice.

Already tried a little road ride under the advice of my osteopath. I didn't really work. Glad it was just a little trial and not a full on proper ride.

As for the wheel building, I enjoy it, that's why I do it. However, I'm not an artistic person. I get satisfaction from the sciency way of wheel building.

Enough is only enough when I can't hold my eyes open anymore. I usually start a wheel after tea, then just keep going while watching TV. I'd aim to get it true in all directions to the point where I can't make out any motion in any direction but I'll accept radial variation if I'm struggling with tension. That said, I'm a throwback from rim brake days where I'll take lateral trueness over radial any day, but when building disc wheels it seems slightly less of an issue. Either way I've never had a wheel have problems following that process. My fave so far is on the front of my full sus, took a fair bit of stress relieving…

Wow, what sort of weird spoke pattern is that?! Got a pic of the full wheel?

I guess I should be saying 0.05mm plus or minus the lateral error (0.15mm)

I'd say if your lateral error is 3x the claimed measurement then it's time to stop. Your ac seperation may be the least of your worries, I reckon you're going a bit OC here!