awac

If you have read the Art of Wheel building by Gerd Schraner he states that;

“Tying and soldering enhances the quality of the finished wheel. The life-expectancy of the wheel is increased enormously without influencing the tension of the spokes.
It adds stability to the spokes' crossed structure, because the hub and the spokes should form an immovable unit and - even more importantly - they should remain so. The spokes no longer move against each other and the result is a solid unity of hub and spokes.
In addition, should the wheel encounter any momentary radial stresses (bumps., the highest stress encountered by any one spoke is decreased thanks to the damping effects of its "co-soldered" neighbors. Tied and soldered spokes therefore tend to look after each other!
Yet another positive aspect is the large flange effect. A small flange hub can almost be trans- formed into a large flange hub. The actual flange diameter is increased to that of a large flange hub.
The wheel becomes a little harder, responds more directly when riding upright and is faster when accelerating - qualities highly appreciated by amateur and professional athletes alike. Tying and soldering also offers advantages for the front wheel, increasing durability and allowing it to be steered more directly when riding upright”.

So there you have it, two respected names with different opinions….you pays your money, you make your choice! I must admit to never really trying tying more than once or twice, but I am going to experiment on one of my own bikes to see if I feel any difference. I read somewhere that one advantage for racers is any spoke that broke would be held by the other one and not get tangled up, that’s a plus point, but whether it improves the handling, I don’t know……yet!

awac

https://www.bikeforums.net/bicycle-m...ification.html

I done my stand with 2 “ears” either side of the board, so the quick clamp has an area to clamp. Works great. Just make the board thick and heavy, mine is 2 plywood sheets of 18mm fixed together. Ciao.

Garthr

I finally decided to purchase a shop quality stand a few years ago. I had previously used a Cycle Pro cheapie from the 80's, but had resorted to having wheels built by Joe Young for which I have absolutely zero regrets with as both sets have been flawless over many years. But hey, they way shipping costs went nuts, and I'm using some vintage parts, I decided now was the time to get a good stand and build my own again, something I had thought about for a long time. I didn't want a Park, not a current one at least. Since I had purchased bike things from Europe that's where I looked. It came down to the Unior 1689 and the VAR 07600. Since the Unior can stand on it's own without the need to purchase a base, I decided to try it. The VAR I would have been tempted by, but they only get a few at a time and they sell out immediately. I was going to get the Unior from Bike24 but they were inexplicably out at the moment I was ordering, so I went with Starbike. The first stand had major QC control issues that were so bad that after much documentation and demonstrating to Starbike and Unior, they replaced it and paid for the return of the first one. The replacement is excellent. It's very much like a Park in execution. Calibrating the upright arms is a little less convenient though as it's done from the bottom, under the base. It's not difficult , just not right up top like the Parks. In use it is as intended, as solid base to hold the wheel as to mimic being hold in an aligned bike frame.

All those truing stands I saw that popped up on Amazon , no way I was going to buy one of those. Same with the Bikehand/Lifeline one that goes by many different brand names. Unior is an established brand that offers professional tools and service and does manufacturer the few parts that may wear out from extensive use. (Not me...) All those generic brands I consider one-offs, throwaways if anything breaks or wear out. That's fine for some things, not for me here with this.

I did buy a tension gauge as it was reasonably priced from Chainreaction in the UK. I checked some of the wheels I had built in the 80's and the tension was even and in the ballpark of what it ought to have been. So the gauge isn't necessary but can give you some feedback as to relating what you're feeling into a number, if desired.

If was building wheels a many and price was no issue that Abby Tools stand looks sweet, as does the DT one. They look good but hands on who knows.

Basically, what you pay for depends on where you buy it from and when. You get what you get, and you pay what you pay. They don't always correlate !

Trakhak

Of the two, Brandt was (a) a professional engineer (who, among other CV items, designed braking systems for Porsche) and (b) inclined to do experiments rather than simply make forceful assertions.

That said, wheels built before the use of tension gauges and during the era of lesser-quality spokes and rims might well have been improved by the use of tying and soldering.

But tying and soldering was never in widespread use, and yet millions of wheels not so treated gave and continue to give satisfactory service.

I suspect that tying and soldering was originally done for track racing bikes, in the heyday of six-day racing, solely to lessen the likelihood that a spoke that broke in a crash or simply from sprinting torque would impale one of the racers.

Kontact 

People can sometimes sense phenomena that are hard to measure. But if they are that hard to measure, how can they matter for something as utilitarian as a bicycle? We don't have an equivalent of audiophiles. Most of us ascribe the wrong things as positives, like frame stiffness.

mpetry912 

Very good point ! But if you compare the low end Walmart free spirit bike against the top of the line Specialized Aeros with DI2 shifting, you'd have to agree that the fancy bike is "better", right ? and yet any effort to characterize what the differences were would inevitably result in clamping the frame into a deflectometer rig to analyze "stiffness".

I enjoyed Trakhak 's comments and I am glad a musician responded on the thread. In music (and in bikes) there definitely are some aspects of the hobby that defy conventonal measurement and for that reason there is an industry that caters to enthusiasts who have refined tastes and are willing to pay large sums of money for stuff they believe is "better". For whatever reason.

and that was my point. I believe some things defy measurement. But as this thread shows, not all people see it that way ! Heck why run the Indy 500 with cars on a track. Just put 33 engines on 33 dynamometers. Same thing, right ? right ?

returning to the topic of truing stands (which was the original point of the discussion) there's no question that a "good" wheel can be built with a very ordinary truing stand. The great Spence Wolf built with a homemade truing stand made out of angle iron and some adjustable brass pointers. In my opinion any truing stand that is "better" than a Park TS2 is going into the realm of marginal diminishing returns, and in that region it is the skill of the builder, not the stand, that makes the difference in the finished result.

having said that, the PK Lie stand really does have something special to offer. I'm a pretty experienced wheel builder, maybe not expert, but have been coached by experts, and I can say that "according to my opinion" (ATMO) the PK Lie stand cuts my build time by about 25-30 % over the Park and VAR stands that I also have in my shop. I attribute that time savings to the following:

- on inital build, it takes mucb less time to get the wheel to initial uniform tension, so you can start adding tension sooner, in no more than 2 steps rather than 3 or 4
- the builder is better able to identify the tension outliers and adjust them earlier in the build process, resulting in in a much more uniformly tensioned wheel with a reduced range of spoke to spoke tension deviations and
- the final truing process is really fast. When you're done you're done. The deflection dials give the builder much better feedback than "light gap" truing stands like the park. Nothing wrong with the park - but the PK Lie is better.

Again, all in my opinion after building about 70 wheels on the PK Lie. I can see why Enve wheels uses them ! And by the way the dials are NOT dial indicators ! they are non-linear deflection guages with resolution down to 0.25 mm for final truing.

Like a Strad, its a real nice instrument. Bada-boom.

/markp

ljsense

Came to see if anyone recommended Roger Musson's wheel building manual, which has a section on building a great truing stand pretty inexpensively if you have access to some basic woodworking tools.

The DIY stand aside, it's a great manual -- very helpful even if you've already built many wheels.

Velo Mule

Here is the link to Roger's downloadable book. Roger Musson Wheelbuilding

Most of the book is dedicated to wheel building with a section devoted to tools including the stand and dish gauge.

Paul_P

You really don't need anything complicated. Here's my stand that I had built for a few bucks 45 years ago to build motorcycle wheels.



At the time I used a dial gauge at the very end of the process, but most of the work was done with just a thick felt marker held by hand (alcohol to remove it) which marked all the 'high' areas. Didn't know anything about tension gauges and don't know if it would have been useable on really thick and short fat-tired chopper spokes. It was more build and true the wheel, ride it for a while, and true it once more.

The last time, a few days ago to make sure my bike wheels were at their best, I just clamped a couple of chopsticks to the stand arms. Went by eye and ear when the rim rubbed the stick. It's possible to be extremely accurate with very simple means.

I've been questioning the need to be super accurate when my 2" Schwalbe Marathon Mondials are almost impossible to get to run perfectly true. It took quite a bit of work just to get them reasonable.

Kontact 

Huh? Of course you can quantify the difference between a 40 pound Free Spirit was low grade bearings, gas pipe tubing and sidewalk geometry vs an Aeros.

You can even quantify the positive elastic qualities of a good frame - you just can't necessarily appreciate bike flex efficiency.

Yan 

I suggest this one:
https://www.chainreactioncycles.com/...ganic-shopping

You can also find it as the "Bikehand Professional Truing Stand". It's the same stand, just branded differently.

I have both this stand and the very expensive Park stand. There is zero functional difference between the two. Zero. I've been building wheels for a long time. Take my word for it.

Don't forget to buy a dishing gauge. Bikehand has an affordable one that's just as good as the Park one. Guess how I know?

Wattsup

Top of the line Park Tool, TS-4.2, will do 6in tires and 250mm hubs. Price has been raised to $569, but REI is still selling them for $479. Get 10% back in rewards, another 5% if you use their credit card to buy it. Net cost, before tax, about $400. You'll never need to buy another stand. When you get tired of truing and building wheels, sell it for close to what you paid for it.

SurferRosa

Bought my first truing stand yesterday at the Bike Works co-op sale for $10. It's an old Park TS-6. It was pretty nasty looking. I disassembled it, cleaned it up and painted the base.

WizardOfBoz

Mark, this is interesting. Karl Pearson, the statistician, held this view. Hence the inviolable catechism: "Data shows correlation, not causation". Which is tacitly ignored by anyone who actually uses stats analysis to support a decision. Anyway, I've been reading "The Book of Why" by Judea Pearl. Highly recommended. You probably know that he's an eminent AI guy. But the first part of the book is kind of a proof that to predict "counterfactuals" (results of experiments not yet done), the one's model (AI or otherwise) has to be causal.
Does any professional rider use tied wheels these days?

BikePower

nice find senor

mpetry912 

I have not read that book. And I think T&S is largely a dead art ! Not really needed anymore, it indeed it ever was. No dog in that fight.

My point was that there "may" be other effects and phenomena - across a wide range of disciplines - that cannot be directly measured or quantified with relatively crude instruments. Jobst's observation that he could not discern any difference in the "stiffness" of tied and soldered wheels because there was no difference in the test load applied vs deflection measured by a dial indicator said more to me about the limitations of his measurements than it did about the wheel.

this is a much bigger discussion than we can really accomodate here.

/markp

Wattsup

Something I forgot, an addition to my REI TS-4.2 post. REI will give you a $100 gift card for applying for their credit card. Put that towards the TS-4.2, and your net cost is about $300 after REI awards, for a stand you probably won't outlive....will do fat bike wheels, w/ tire up to 6 inches wide!

Biker Pete 

I very recently bought then returned that one. The wheel did not sit true in the stand. Don’t know if that was bad QC on just mine or if they are all like that.

This one is simple and very well made: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B085B...b_b_asin_title

BikePower

what about the alignment tool for the stand?

smd4

BikePower

BikePower

Yan do you personally have the Bikehand one or the Lifeline one? Thank you.

Yan 

I personally have the bikehand one, but as far as I can tell from the photos they are exactly identical. Clearly made in the same factory.

Don't bother with the alignment tool. Just get a standalone dishing gauge. The "centering" on truing stands is a useless gimmick. Any good wheel builder will check with a separate dishing gauge anyway.

mpetry912 

their spoke wrenches look good, they have the chuck that engages the nip on all 4 sides.

Like the DT which I use

/markp

BikePower

I just pulled the trigger on the Bikehand one Parktool clone. They are finally back in stock. Going to true up my wheels and use it for gluing up my tubies also. Hopefully the.quality is as good as everyone says.