Andrew R Stewart 

Yan- I know the personal satisfaction one gets when riding one's own work, especially when on a bucket list ride. Mine was going nearly cross country on my self made touring bike.

I guess my point was that visual appearance is not necessarily consistent with even spoke tensions, and that it is the spoke tension aspect that speaks to the wheel's long term stability. Ending up with both is great, but runout is the lesser aspect the longer you plan on ride the wheels. Andy

Ryan_M

Well, unless they came back to you and told you your rim is #%^ and that's as good as you're going to get. But for a new, quality rim I'd be asking questions too. The more I learn, the more I'm realizing there really isn't the mystique around wheel building that I once thought there was. I can't see ever paying someone to do it for me. Mind you the big caveat here is that of the 12 bikes in the house only 1 is rim brake - and that one's days are likely numbered to be replaced by a disc model at some point. Also I like straight pull hubs (I know any claimed advantage over j-bend is dubious, its more a cosmetic decision) so the lacing pattern is predefined.

pdlamb

My apologies, I confused you with another poster. Hope you're having a great trip!

ClydeClydeson

When I used to build wheels for customers, I never used a dial gauge or a tension meter. In those days these tools were not commonly used, in my experience. Runout - both radial and lateral - were done to an 'as close as I can get it' standard. If the customer could see obvious runout once the wheel was mounted then that was not good enough. Depending on the manufacturing tolerance of the rims and spokes, this was either easy or very difficult to achieve.
For my own (not customer) wheels, I tried to get them at least straight enough that the rim didn't rub the brakes. I never felt that any more precision than that was necessary, although I understood that paying customers expected more.

Tension was done by 'feel', and 'feel' was developed through practice and comparing with known good wheels. I only knew for sure that the tension was reasonable if the wheel was known to be reliable over time - broken spokes generally meant there was not enough tension, or perhaps the spokes were not 'stress relieved' properly. If there were cracks in the rim or hub, that was generally an indication of too much tension, although, again in my experience, the amount of force on the spoke wrench required to get 'too much' tension made it pretty obvious that something was wrong. On my own wheels I spent more time trying to get even tension than getting the rim true to an arbitrary standard.

ign1te

What is good enough is best determined by riding the wheels that you have built. Poor lateral trueness = brake rubbing with. Poor radial trueness = bumpy ride. Uneven spoke tension = wheel goes out of true over time. If you can build a wheel that is satisfying to ride, there is no need to worry about tolerances in an absolute sense.

zacster

I don't have a truing stand and the only feeler gauges I have are my fingers, but I do have a spoke tension meter. The wheels I've built for myself always fit in the rim brakes with a tight tolerance, and have never gone out of true. It's been 5-10 years since I last built a wheel too, so they've lasted. I ride in NYC and this is not the most wheel friendly place either. Don't sweat it. I just try to get the tension fairly even and the finger test does the rest. If I can't feel it I'm done. For dish I used a properly dished wheel sitting in the dropout to see where it landed and made my build match it, although I wished I had a real dish tool.

grumpus

You can make one out of cardboard - subtract rim external width from hub OLN width and halve it; take a straight edged piece of cardboard and cut a flat-bottomed notch that deep in the side, et voilà.

FBinNY 

You likely already own a Campbell's super precise dishing gauge (TM), but don't know it.

Take 3 soup cans, any flavor is fine. Place them in a triangle on your table, and rest your wheel on top. Stack something up to the axle face. I use stacked pennies, but it could be anything you have on hand. (For premium wheels, I use quarters)

Flip the wheel and compare.

zacster

This is one I've never heard before.

FBinNY 

Learn something new every day, here on BF.

Ryan_M

Wow. Yeah I just flip the wheel over in the truing stand. Never used, nor seen a use for a dishing gauge.