Spoked Wheels
Legendary Member
- Location
- Bournemouth
You will never get all spokes at the same note. Having said that, I try not to go beyond a semitone difference or 5% on a tension meter and that works well for me.
Spoke twist is an evil effect that you need to understand and see for yourself. I once put little flags on every single spoke of a wheel for experiment purposes and I tried different techniques to prevent it / remove it. I didn't find out anything new but I learn a few things that were useful to know for my own style of building wheels. For instance, when to expect any twisting in relation to lubrication. Or when tensioning, say half a turn, how much I should go over the half turn before turning back. People say go over a 1/4, or turn 3/8 and come back 1/8.... anyway, there is no a one answer that is accurate for all cases but you learn to get a feel for it with experience. I think it's fair to say that the techniques reduces spoke twisting but you should expect to do something else to try to eliminate the rest. For me, the method that works best is to place the wheel on a flat surface while holding it 180 degrees apart and apply pressure down and turn clockwise /unticlockwise and continue pressing down like that. Turn the wheel over and do the same. My experiment showed that I get best results when I don't let the spoke twisting accumulate and I should do this at least twice in the building process. Some people use this method for streess relieve but I prefer squeezing spokes but that is another matter
it means that I do more stress relieving altogether Anyway, it seems you have done a good job, quite likely a better job than your LBS would have done anyway. Congratulations.
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