Originally Posted by
dminor
Huh?
I thought it was Sheldon Brown's site I read it on, but I'm having trouble finding it now. Anyway, one of the articles I read was saying that if you look closely at the way the the spokes cross each other on the left side of the wheel versus the right side, on a hand built wheel, they're mirror images of each other, symmetric around the plane that would split the rim vertically. A machine built wheel, on the other hand, supposedly (according to the article), has the spokes crossing each other the same way on each side, rather than being symmetric. It's a small thing for sure, I just figured, if I'm getting the wheels trued anyway, it might be fun to relace them first to look hand-built (and in essence they would be). It might not look right or be as strong anyway because of the way the spokes are bent now, so I'm just going to forget it.
I won't insist on a
master wheel builder, but I still don't trust the LBS with this.