Originally Posted by Ian Turpey
I've been a mechanic for a couple of years and have seen a tension meter lying about the shop. When I asked the boss about it he just kind muttered... dont need it, its too slow. whats the deal with them, will it improve your wheel dramatically, is it worth the extra time?
I'm a believer. I've worked on lots of wheels that were satisfactory relative to radial and side-to-side trueness but, never-the-less, had significantly spoke tension variences. When that's the case, the loosest spokes may eventually break.
A few years ago I did tech support for a Ragbrai team. One morning a rider told me that he'd broken a spoke the previous day and had somebody else replace the broken spoke. I told him that he should have had me do it because the other guy had probably just returned his wheel to the condition it was in previously. What it was before was a wheel that was about to break a spoke. Sure enough, that very night he came to me with another broken spoke. I replaced the broken spoke, equalized the tension on all 32 spokes and retrued the wheel. He was able to complete the rest of the ride uneventfully.
There are only a few logical reasons to build your own wheels today:
1. You want to lace up something that's unusual.
2. You get personal satisfaction from building your own wheels.
3. You want wheels that exceed typical store-bought quality.
I subscribe to the latter two. For me using a tensiometer is worth it because it helps me to build the best wheel that I'm capable of building.