This will probably be my last post on the subject because, as I stated, I have little experience other than the ‘one’ wheelset build. Which, is exactly why I felt compelled to respond; the OP seemed closer to my experience than those of the many obviously experienced wheel builders here.

My impression from reading the above cited references and others was that making sure the spokes were basically not twisted and had been prepared to accept the load of tension they were about to receive by bending them into shape before tensioning was as important, if not more so, than the actual tension itself. This makes sense to my simplistic mind, seeing that the rod (spoke) will want to twist as the nipple is tensioned. Some people will drop some lube on the nipple and eyelet thinking that it will allow the nipple to spin as the tension is brought up thereby allowing the spoke to remain straight. But at the higher tensions of the final truing, a little lubricant doesn’t do that much good IMHO. That’s why some tress relieving measures have to be used as you bring the tension up. And, you can take your choice of what those measures are as it seems that there are many. It seems to be the ‘secret sauce’ of a quality wheel build. Not to mention making sure the spokes are bent to accept the high tension as they overlap the other spokes.

This level of wheel building discussion is fascinating to someone like myself, but sometimes I get the impression from these threads that if the newbie can just get the hub laced to the rims, the battle is won; when in fact, the battle has just begun.

The wheelset; the most underappreciated part of any bike, and the people that can build them to handle the incredible loads they do and still remain true year after year are artists in this backyard mechanic hack's opinion.