delbiker1 

For the first time, today I trued a wheel. I am pretty pleased to have accomplished that. It is another step forward in my commitment to learn bicycle mechanics. I know it is certainly not a professional job, and I guess I will see how long it will stay true. I have had a Feedback Sports single arm truing stand for a while and had made a couple of half hearted attempts to use it, but really did not put any effort into those attempts.

Today I pulled the front wheel, Mavic Open Pro/Ultegra hub, that was on my Lemond Poprad, a recent purchase. It had a shallow wiggle that got worse when I ran over a medium size pot hole last week. I have watched a couple of videos this past week and decided today to give the truing a serious attempt. I pulled the tire and tube off and put the wheel on the stand. I studied the wheel, and listened to the noise from the lateral indicator and started to make small adjustments to the spokes. I was doing about a 3 spoke area, one side, at a time and it did not take long to start seeing improvement. I just got done making what, I hope, were the final adjustments until I can put it back on the back and give a try. I am surprised by how little the tension adjustment can be. I have not checked the axial trueness yet.

I think I may take it to the LBS and ask if they would give a quick check to give me some idea of how good, or bad, the true is. Certainly cannot hurt.
Now, tensiometer, yes or no? I know I cannot do the " by the ear, adjust by tone".

aggiegrads

I am a novice wheel builder and I rely on a tensiometer, not for absolute tension, but relative tension between spokes.

None of the (dozen or so) wheels I have built or hand tensioned have come out of true yet, so I feel like my methods are successful.

You should be able to see "true", but an expert wheel builder would be able to tell you how uniform the tensions are. The person who taught me how to build wheels liked to say that the only difference between a novice and expert wheel builder was how long it took to build the wheel. If a wheel had lateral and radial true, correct dish, uniform spoke tension, and was properly stress relieved, it would have the same quality and reliability whether it was built by a novice or expert.

Bill Kapaun

If that is a "one finger" stand, did you flip the wheel to make sure it matches?

cpach

You can get by without a tensiometer, but I'd recommend getting one if you're working on wheels often or are doing full builds. I have extremely good relative pitch so I mostly pluck spokes to check tension evenness, and use a tension meter for assessing absolute tension. If you cannot judge relative tension by pitch your wheels will be in much better shape if you use a tensiometer. Every time you adjust the wheel you should strive to bring the wheel closer to even tension on each side. When I note that the wheel is out of true, I check all the spokes to in that area to see if there are any outliers that would explain the defect in trueness and work on that spoke so that the wheel is closer to even than it was before. If the tension must be made more uneven to correct a defect it indicates a deformation of the rim itself.

To a certain extent experience leads to better wheels, but if you simply spend enough time and perform all advisable steps you can get an end result that nearly matches that of a master--it'll just take forever. Past the point of producing good wheels, most improvement in skill is predominantly in building faster, which is where I feel I lay as someone who does build wheels as part of my profession. In particular, I really envy those who are really fast at lacing, as I feel that's where I have the most improvement to make with regards to time.

delbiker1 

I rode my Poprad with the trued wheel today. It is rolling with no wobble and the sometimes, sort of a squeak from the spokes is gone. I checked both sides of the wheel before I remounted it on the bike. I think it is as close as I can get it with the truing stand I am using. Next up is my real wheel from the same bike. I am definitely going to invest in a tensionmeter. It just makes sense to me after reading comments about them. Also, when I pluck them, I can feel the difference in tension in them. I know I cannot go by the pitch I hear from the spokes. It looks to me like the Park Tool tensiometer is the way to go. Quite a few other options available, but most of the time, when I purchase a tool because it is cheaper, it is not in the long term. I am going to go from one bike to the next and true all the wheels, no hurry, I have a lot of free time. Any comments on tensiometers are certainly welcome. Thanks, Ken

davidad

Be sure and stress relieve by grabbing parallel spokes and giving them a good squeeze.

ThermionicScott 

@delbiker1, you keep saying that you cannot true by ear. Is it because you don’t trust your sense of relative pitch? Because plucking the spokes on the same side of a wheel is otherwise an excellent way to tell which ones are tighter than others.

delbiker1 

I definitely have diminished hearing. A lot of loud noise in my years. I am also a bit tone deaf. When I pluck spokes they mostly sound the same, sometimes a little variation. So, yes, I do not trust my sense of pitch. Maybe that could improve once I get a tensiometer, get the tension closer on the spokes and improve my truing skills. Also, I did do a stress relief on the spokes as mentioned by Davidad.

I started working on the rear wheel this afternoon, but had to get to my school bus route, so did not finish. I already felt more confident and think I have it close. I have a 3 day weekend starting this evening. I plan on getting a lot of things done tomorrow, both bike related and not, and then spending pretty much all day Saturday out and about on a bike.