Originally Posted by Chombi

I just built up and trued/dished and tensioned my first wheelset (I used to just lace them and had the LBS true and tension them for me) using NOS Mavic hubset and rims and new DT 14/15/14 DB DT stainless steel spokes. and one thing I learned is not to rely on thread counting to get my wheel started. What worked for me instead, after a couple of false starts with problems with a few spokes a bit too slack to manage, too much lateral and vertical runout was to first seat all the nipples by just using my fingers from the hub side of the rim, doing it in pairs at opposite sides of the rim, going around till all are evenly finger tight against the eylet wells as evenly as I can feel they are (lubricating the nipples and spoke threads is critical). This gave me a much better baseline start with the wheels that is already close to being true and round and dished properly. I think it sped up the whole process of building the wheels by minimizing time and effort by minimizing the truing and rounding and dishing effort in general.
I think The method of starting out by counting exposed threads does not always work too well sometimes maybe because of tolerances with the manufacturing process where not all spokes have exactly the same threaded legnths with a few oddball slightly longer or shorter from spec.
I guess everyone eventually finds their own way of building wheels with a continuous process of trial and error. I think I found my own best way to start out my wheels with this method.

Chombi