[quote]James, I agree that there will be bedding in of components but all of that shoud be taken care of by the builder before the wheel leaves the shop. There should be sufficient stretching, squeezing and detensioning done that once out of the shop the wheel should not need any retensioning. I have the callouses and carpel tunnel to show for it
True, on the occasions that I have built (just my own) wheels I did spend a lot of time squeezing, leaning sideways on teh rim etc (I even heard of a builder who walked on the wheeels!) but won`t there still be some longer term bedding in , after all no matter how much building squeezing etc that is a small proportion of the total tiem a wheel has being ridden and stressed at every rotation?
Re Hope Hoops, great wheels I agree having got both raod and MTB set; I believe that they are hand finished off at Hope, but even so my road wheels still required some retensioning after 1000 miles use, spokes had gone a bit soft