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A grumpy old wheel builder in Portland told me to stop chasing tension numbers and use my hands
Back in 2009 I was building wheels at a shop in Portland and I was obsessed with hitting the exact same tension reading on every spoke. An old builder named Ray watched me for about 20 minutes, then said "your wheel sounds dead, kid, put the gauge down." I was pretty annoyed but he had me pluck spokes like a guitar string and feel for the ones that rang flat. Turns out I had been over-tensioning drive side spokes for months and the gauge never caught it because the numbers looked fine on paper. Now I squeeze the spokes in pairs to check for even feel and only grab the tensiometer at the very end as a sanity check. Has anyone else had an old timer call out their method like that, and did you actually change or just nod and keep doing it your way?
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the_evan1mo ago
Eh, tension still matters more than feel on carbon rims though.
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