The common knowledge among guys who have built wheels for a long time is that how you install the spokes and build up your pattern doesn't mean jack. If you use good quality material, rims, spokes, hubs, whether you have inside or outside spokes trailing, symetric or asymetric, when built and tightened up and destressed as you go along, the wheel is going to last. Nice even tension, slowly tightened in side and up and down direction and the wheels last for years barring unforseen accidents. Of course, seating spoke heads, flattening the crook with gentle tapping on the outside and pulling the inside crook to straighten the bend to line of force are among other little tricks GOOD wheelbuilders have been doing for years. Spoke tensioners are nice for those learning who need a reference, but real wheelbuilders know what kind of tension the wheel needs by feel. It hasn't changed in a hundred years, and too much technical nitpicking and jargon gets to be claptrap gumflapping. Ted Ernst Palos Verdes Estates, CA
<JohnThompson@new.rr.com> wrote:
>
>
> I think the bottom line is that there is more than one way of building a
> perfectly good bicycle wheel.
Whilst this is obviously true, I wonder if Brandt and Lickton et al would
be too ideologically entrenched to admit the obvious. Wheelbuilding as it's
frequently espoused seems like one part science and about four or five part
s
dogma.
Kurt Sperry
Bellingham WA